Prototype Ninja
by theaceoffire
Summary: Hated by everyone, he survived. Yet Naruto's largest challenge would occur tonight, long after his weary body collapsed onto his bed, worn down by defeating his traitor teacher Mizuki, by new knowledge, and from excessive chakra use learning a new skill. Godlike!Naruto, Possible (Small) Harem, Gore Likely.
1. Is today over yet?

The Anime's 'Naruto' and 'Naruto: Shippuden' are owned by Akamru Jump and Viz Media, and was written by Masashi Kishimoto.

Prototype is a video game developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto collapsed into his bed, his worn body nearly comatose from a long evening. The tattered mattress felt heavenly on his sore body, but his mind didn't care right now.

Today had been pretty terrible really.

Once again he had failed the graduation exam at school. Designed to be so simple even a civilian with little training could pass with ease, the boy had always experienced difficulties.

Not that this was new, of course. For 13 years he had suffered from slights and outright abuse, to the point where Naruto had come to expect it really... but he had pushed through. When they would only sell him oversized, poor quality orange clothing, he would hand sew it to make it wearable. When he realized his books were outdated and sometimes outright fraudulent, he had stolen a classmates copies (Sasuke-teme's actually. Stuck up prick.)

Of course, it had taken up to his first failure at the academy to learn how to read well enough to realize how badly he was getting educated. And it took half way through the second failure to learn the one skill that had possibly saved his life: The Henge Jutsu, the transformation technique... the ability to be not-Naruto for a set amount of time.

With the ability to actually read on his own and to look like a random civilian asking for help, his world had vastly improved. He could get into the library without sneaking, his food budget nearly quadrupled as he avoided getting rotten produce and was charged reasonable rates.

He even learned most of what he was supposed to have been taught before being thrown out of the orphanage. He would change into a stranger, bribe a student to skip class, and take their place instead. Oh he had experienced a few close calls, but at least now he had a strong grasp on reading, writing, mathematics, and so forth.

Obviously though, this wouldn't work in the classes given for and by ninjas. True, his transformation technique was unique and awesome, actually changing him rather than wrapping him in an illusion. A REAL change, impossible to see through at all!

Except it kept failing.

He wasn't sure why really, but no matter how long he kept working on his chakra control exercises, his body would occasionally flare up with a painful surge of energy. At the worst times. Not only would it disrupt his current disguise, but the actual increase in available energy was permanent, and he would have to retrain through all the control exercises again or lose all progress.

And these surges happened when he was trying to escape, or when trying to trick others into providing more information about techniques or life in general. For the longest time he had thought that someone had been actively working against him, but he never caught anyone making hand-signs when the surges occurred.

For 13 years he had been denied the rights of other children, but no more! His face split into a wide grin as he rubbed his gifted forehead protector again. Iruka-sensei had found him in the forest, after he had been tricked into stealing the Forbidden Scroll from the Hokage's Office and told to learn a skill from it. Within an hour he had found out that he contained a demon 9 tailed fox, that his teacher Mizuki was a traitor to the village, and that Iruka-sensei was willing to take a blade in the back to protect his student.

Naruto carefully pulled the cloth straps off and traced the village's symbol etched into the metal buckle, following the shape of the leaf. Seeing his teacher threatened, he had managed to take down Mizuki and capture him. He had earned the right to become a ninja.

His face settled into a frown. He had of course found out today that All the hate and trials had a cause behind them as well. The demon sealed inside him was the same giant fox that had killed so many when it attacked on Naruto's birthday.

Many of the past insults made sense now. Creature. Monsters. It also explained why someone would stalk him to mess up his techniques. Why someone would try to poison him. To break into his home and destroy his clothing. His furniture. Why giant mobs would form and chase him. Why he was always alone.

Why Hiruzen Sarutobi, the third Hokage, and the closest thing Naruto had to family... why he would give Naruto strange looks of sadness, of failure.

Naruto had assumed that the Old Man had been judging him, for his failures to graduate, for his failures in general. Now it seemed far more reasonable that Hokage-jiji had been blaming himself for the trials Naruto had gone through.

The villagers were morons, apparently.

Naruto's face twisted into a severe scowl. If he HAD been a demon, those bastards had tried damn hard to convince him to murder this village. What moron would see a monster and decide to poke and mock it as it grew in strength?

Because he WOULD grow. Not just because his new headband would allow him into the advanced and secured sections of the library, not just because he now knew enough to both defend himself and when he needed to stop and report actions to the Old Man...

Now he had a skill that could take advantage to all this power he held.

The Shadow Clone Technique. The Forbidden Scroll was wrong about its use, surprisingly. It claimed that by splitting your energy in half and applying it to your shadow you could create a single-hit clone that could act with your abilities and knowledge, and return what it discovers back to you.

It didn't split your energy in half though, not if you did it right. And Naruto had been surprised by that. No, it just had an absolutely enormous cost to use, but it was a set amount. You could use this technique with LESS then that amount, at which point it would take the chakra provided (Most users gave half), and it would split that amount and do the whole "I'll split this energy" thing. But that is actually what made the skill dangerous.

You could make a thousand clones very easily, and they would all split half your total energy up to do so... but since you didn't give them enough power, they couldn't process their memories just after dispelling.

Without processing those memories, you would receive thousands of copies of your whole mind, not just the tiny list of changes since creation.

The original description of the technique clearly was unaware of this, simply warning that too many clones caused brain death.

But for Naruto? He had energy to burn. Making 200 clones did wear him out, but they had all been fully powered. Not only had they processed their memories, but as each one collapsed they shared their processed memories with the other clones, who would check for new and useful information and absorb it.

The result had been spectacular. Not only had he beat down that traitor teacher Mizuki, but in those few minutes Naruto had gained almost a week of useful information about the attack. His personal fighting style had actually evolved substantially while fighting the Chunin, as each clone dispatched would share their limited fighting experience, what worked and didn't, and how they had used chakra enhancement or the environment to help gain an edge.

They had even shared what tricks Mizuki had used.

Instantly the other clones and Naruto had gained that information, and the remaining clones had focused on duplicating the tricks seen, on changing stances and punches to try and do more damage, on working their chakra in different areas of the body to increase or modify damage dealt.

And since they all knew what had already been attempted, they all tried different tactics in response.

Basically Naruto had felt the refined experience of attempting hundreds of ideas, most terrible in the beginning but quite a few good ones toward the end. He now had a list of attack stances that seemed to have worked alright, most of them having been refined as the clones started utilizing them during the fight.

Even his chakra control had improved, despite the fight being so short.

He couldn't wait to actually train with this! Not to mention he could now be seen in the same area as his transformed clones, giving them less scrutiny and preventing the civilians from suspecting anything.

The academy really focused on learning only three skills: The replacement, the transformation, and the illusion clone techniques. Although his classmates seemed to create illusions instead actually transforming with their skill... sucks to be them really. And that blasted illusion clone technique. A skill htat required a fairly high level of chakra control, which became much harder the more chakra you had to work with.

And Naruto had chakra in spades.

He grinned as he thought back to the fight. From now on, that particular issue would be a strength, not the damned rock around his neck that he had suffered under for the last few years.

As the boy fell asleep, eager to begin training and shock the village, to show them exactly what they had been mocking for so long, he failed to notice how abnormally quiet it was in the apartment.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

The Anbu were the most advanced of ninjas in Konoha, the village hidden in the leaves. While the skill categories normally were listed as student, Genin, Chunin, and Jonin, the two unlisted ones were Hokage and their Anbu.

Hand selected by the leader of the village, technically they could be any rank, as sometimes it would be helpful for them to hide as fresh students or weak teammates. They had special skills and were held to a much higher standard than the average Jonin. In fact, many were strong enough to even give the Hokage himself a bit of a workout... just a bit. Anyone who earned the position quickly found out exactly WHY the Hokage was held above all.

This Anbu had abandoned his name. His home. His private life. Like all Anbu, he was given an animal mask and name, and his was Iguana.

And his fury was unstoppable.

Over 13 years of failure. Trying to avenge his parents, and his dead fiance, his beautiful soon-to-be wife. He couldn't bare to remember her face anymore, hearing nothing but her screams as molten red fox devastated the village.

He had tried hiring hits on this small monster while it was still in the crib, scheming probably about future murders. All attempts failed. He had poisoned the food given to the child for most of his time in the orphanage, but somehow he pulled through at the hospital. Even when he had infiltrated that same hospital and attempted to over-dose the brat with painkillers, the bastard had the nerve to keep breathing.

Five years ago, he had lucked out. Iguana had been tasked to assist in clearing out one of the hidden basses of Orochimaru, one of Konoha's legendary Sannin and more legendary traitors. While all the others had been following their own orders, he had managed to fill a storage seal with dozens of vials, containing molds, blood-lines, poisons, raw materials suspected to be required for the deadly curse seal, and even some liquids that he couldn't identify. Many had massive warnings written on the outside.

For an evil bastard like Orochimaru to have actually bothered with writing a warning, they MUST be good. That bastard had no issue experimenting on children, corpses, or himself. He used procedures with less than 1/10th survival rates without care, so these must be devastating.

And Iguana had been right. These vials had been some of the only things that could actually hurt Naruto for longer than a few hours. Heck, the stuff he had put in the boy's milk had actually taken two days to recover from.

But he was out of time. The Hokage would quickly find out that it was Iguana who had encouraged Mizuki to become a traitor, to target the boy. And then he would find out about last weeks breaking and entering into the restricted medical experimentation labs. That he had confiscated nearly anything marked dangerous, contagious, or lethal.

Quietly, Iguana snuck up to the boy, still clothed in an orange outfit that was the only thing people would sell the monster. A few quick hand signs and the creature fell into an even deeper sleep.

Iguana pulled out the syringe. While Mizuki had been running his plot, Iguana had been preparing this as an absolute last resort. He had captured dozens of animals, and tested all the liquids one by one on them, then taken the most horrifying and painful looking deaths and combined THOSE liquids together. Some canceled others out and had to be left alone, and in one case he got lucky and the combined effect had been exponential.

This liquid was the result of dozens of tests with the most dangerous of materials. Iguana was fairly sure that just creating it was going to cause his death in the next week or so. Just being in the same room as those experiments had been hazardous to his health, not that it would matter after this.

With a maniacal grin, them an leaned over the tiny child and carefully felt his neck, searching and finding the largest artery. Even if they were disturbed, it would be too late.

He would avenge his family, his love.

He would save everyone.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto had been dreaming about ramen. Honestly it was not surprising, considering that one of the first people to ever treat him with respect and friendship, Ayame, had been a young woman working at a noodle stand. Back then, compared to the trash that the recently evicted orphan had been forced to consume, it was literally the food of the gods. And that was BEFORE she gave him a free meal.

Suddenly the dream deepened. Darkened. Collapsed. Naruto was dropped like a rock into shallow, reddish water, some sort of sewer system.

It felt familiar, yet he had never been here before. His mind also felt clear now, unlike during his recent dream... but he was hesitant to consider this a real place.

For one thing, the walls moved slightly. Like a mountain breathing, the red walls were made of some sort of brick like stone, slick with moisture. A series of leaking pipes covered the ceiling, not simply following the tunnel he found himself in, but twisting into the walls over and over, like snakes that were in a hurry.

For a lack of options, Naruto followed the faint pull down the tunnel, something murmuring behind his ear that this was where he needed to go, needed to be.

There was no light but he could see. The floor was covered in liquid, but he felt dry. He was in a sewer, but there was no smell, no real sounds other than distant dripping... yet he knew the way.

When he entered a giant room, one with massive bars covering one wall... he was here.

And behind the bars... was a giant wall of red fur. Massive beyond belief. Naruto curiously drew closer.

The wall of fur shifted... and he was staring into an eye. Three times his height, easily. Oh god, it was the fox... and he was HUGE!

His mind sort of shut down, as he fell into a sitting position, staring at the eye.

It looked amused.

The room vibrated heavily. " **So... My jailer has finally appeared.** "

Naruto blinked. "Uh... I guess so. I didn't actually know you were here, honestly. Or where here is. Aren't you supposed to be in that seal I saw on my belly?"

A huge, slightly malicious grin exposed massive white teeth. " **Technically we are both in that seal. This place is an artificially created bridge between your mind and the seal itself, basically created to allow maintenance on the seal if that blond ninja had survived the process of binding me.** " The grin grew much larger. " **Which he didn't, of course. Got the bastard with my tail at the last minute, though I was aiming for you.** "

Naruto was stunned. "ME! Why me?! I was like an hour old or whatever."

A massive mound of fur shrugged. " **You were to be my next jail, killing you would have had me free for the the first time in over a couple hundred years. But that woman and man got in the way.** "

The boy felt overwhelmed. "Woman?"

The huge fox snorted with annoyance. " **That chain-loving jerk who was my former container.** " His eye latched back onto the child. " **Just like YOU are about to be my former container.** "

Naruto blinked. "Wha... What do you mean? Is there a way to let you out?" He frowned. "Wouldn't you just destroy the village again?"

A chuckle rippled through the area. " **Oh yes, I will destroy this village. Probably every other one I can find as well. Humanity has clearly lived too long.** " The massive grin looked hungry. " **And I don't NEED to be let out. As finally, FINALLY I get to watch your turn into a corpse.** "

The boy shuffled back from the bars a bit. "What do you mean? What have I done to you?"

The huge eye glared at him. " **You didn't die.** "

Naruto felt something in his mind snap, and suddenly everything seemed a bit more focused. "Can you explain a bit?"

The fur wall chuckled. " **A last request? Why not. That yellow haired monkey who sealed me may have been weak, but he was clever. This seal we are in is filled with conditions, requirements, and fail-safes to protect you. I wasn't paying too much attention at the time, but apparently he watned to help you out due to some sort of family obligation.** " Missing Naruto's stunned and quickly thinking expression, the fox continued. " **He thought of nearly everything. Not only can I not escape, but I couldn't contact you unless needed, I had to keep your body alive and mostly healthy, had to stop poisons and heal wounds. But he did make one mistake.** "

The fox turned his grin on fully. " **He didn't prevent me from 'volunteering' to help. Even as I tried to avoid healing you as much as possible, as I tried to let the various chemicals do as much pain as they could, I always had to fix it in the end... but I can give you bursts of power and shove it into your chakra coils.** "

Naruto felt more things snapping in his mind as he followed along. "So... you were sealed by Minato Namikaze, the fourth Hokage of the village. And if he is family, then maybe Uzumaki is from my mom's side. Seeing as you are kind of being a jerk, it's not surp..." He jerked viciously as something huge plonked in his head, before continuing. "Not surprising that you would want to do only the least amount possible to help me. So why give me more chakra?"

A vicious grin filled the room. " **I wanted you to explode.** "

Naruto blinked. "Ah." Then he smirked, having pushed the stuff about possible family to the side for now. "So... How did that work out for ya? I feel pretty non-exploded right now."

The fur beast lost his smirk and grumbled. " **Turns out that your DNA, the Uzumaki stuff, was just barely able to adapt to the massive changes. It even copied some of the healing I was forced to do and helped keep your body together. It takes time for me to build up enough chakra to burst into your coils, and the seal prevented me from getting it high enough to guarantee an explosion. Your damned healing only just kept up with it.** "

The creature glared at the boy. " **Even worse, your coils kept healing into stronger and larger shapes, meaning I had to start pushing vastly larger chunks of power to even harm you as time went on. Now it takes me weeks to save up enough of a chunk to mess up your control.** "

Naruto blinked before thumping his fist on his palm in understanding. "Ah, YOU are the one boosting my reserves at really awkward moments. Well, can't really get angry at you pulling a prank, I am the king of such."

Teeth shrieked at the child. " **IT WASN'T A PRANK, I WANTED YOU TO DIE!** "

Naruto grinned. "Well, better luck next time fur-ball. And thanks for all the wonderful help you provided, I'm sure these massive chakra reserves will be very useful in the future."

Suddenly the smile was back on the foxes face. " **I suppose it would have been. It's sort of a moot point now though.** " A hue tail appeared from the top of the bars and pointed at a wall, covered in strange symbols. " **While you have been shoved here thanks to some guys skill, an angel from above has apparently decided to grant me a gift by infecting you with something... horrible.** "

Naruto jerked to his feet. "WHAT!? What did he put in me!?"

The fox looked oh so happy. " **I honestly don't know. It has all kinds of fun toys in it. I've been holding it back from this room so you would have no time to do anything. Wouldn't want you to somehow wake up and get medical treatment or something.** " It rested its massive head on its paws and watched as the mortal frantically raced to where the exit had been, finding it sealed with energy. " **Soon your corpse will split open, my power will be free, and I will destroy everything.** " It chuckled. " **Well, after a few years when my body reforms, but to me that is nothing. Don't worry, your precious teacher friend and those ramen people will join you soon after that.** "

Naruto attempted to exit past the strange energy, but quickly tried to calm down. His mind raced as he glanced over at the wall with strange shapes on it.

His mind groaned as another ping echoed, just as one of the shapes on the wall cracked. "What are those things anyway?"

The fox glanced over and chuckled. " **Oh those? I quite enjoy them. Some ninja with a blank mask wrote a dozen or so of those seals on you as a baby one of the first nights in the orphanage. The restrict thought speed, muscle development, reaction times, almost everything really. In fact, some of the dissonance of those seals helped weaken mine to the point where I could do my chakra gift attack. The one restricting chakra control, I think.** "

Naruto dashed to the wall, examining the surviving seals for patterns, logic, some sort of method to the madness. Just as another one cracked, Naruto realized it had been another mental seal... and suddenly all the seals made more sense, almost intuitively understandable. He looked on in shock at the remaining ones. "How can I think at all if I have all these crammed on me?"

The fox frowned. " **Well they didn't prevent development, just made it difficult to think and so forth. And with my powers healing the brain damage being created and so forth, they sort of accidentally trained parts of you. It took you about 500% more effort just to understand concepts at the same speed as an average child would, sometimes worse. Thus you became a genius in some ways just attempting to handle basic things like learning a language. Thank the sage you were bound like this, a smarter kid or one without crippled chakra control would have been much tougher for me to sabotage.** "

Naruto's fingers rapidly traced another mental seal as he watched black ooze start to destabilize it. "And this black stuff?"

The Fox's eyes sparkled. " **Well brat, the strange combination of materials is not simply destroying your bone marrow and skin and organs and stuff. It is trying to consume your mind. Has to eat through the seals first though... honestly, this goo has started acting almost intelligent since I began providing it chakra.** "

Naruto gasped. "YOU WHAT!?"

A deep laugh filled the room. " **YES! I will ensure your death today child, and I may even provide a quick merciful death to that Shinobi out there who helped me. And once you become brain dead, the Soul Reaper's seal will collapse without triggering the death cascade scenario. It may take me years to reform, but at least I can remember you slowly losing your mind and falling into despair!** **"**

The boy pushed back the gloom and fear that crushed on his spine and focused. At least as the blackness progressed it became easier and easier to focus. His eyes tracked the goo, watching exactly how it was dissolving the seals, the steps involved, what took longest. As his mind cleared, the symbols seemed to become obvious in nature. If only he had more time to think about this.

Naruto's eyes widened. The fox had basically told him that the goo was going for his mind AFTER it got through the seals… but also that it was acting smarter. He glanced over at the cage and saw some paper on the front of the bars. He quickly dashed over and examined it. Yep, more seals.

The fox watched with a patient grin, like someone watching a car wreck. " **Oh? Feel free to release me sooner. You'll still die, but maybe I will spare some of the meat sacks in your wretched village. Just tug that tag free and die with some dignity.** "

He ignored this, of course. The fox had easily proven itself to be untrustworthy. And a jerk. And some dark part of Naruto was really looking forward to seeing if this idea would work. His eyes scanned the paper, tracing thousands of squiggles and connecting lines at an unheard of rate.

There.

His hand sliced out and his finger dripped black with sudden ink. Yes this may be his mind, but this room WAS made for seal maintenance. The fox said so. His finger acted like a calligraphy tool as quick changes were shuffled over the shapes, dozens of changes made at an inhuman speed, not a flaw made nor any hesitance shown.

Naruto had never felt more alive! These runes and seals felt more natural than breathing, so glaringly obvious that this line should be shifted that way and these marks twisted that way.

Within moments he stopped and dashed to the center of the room, ignoring the confused look on the fox's face. A few quick symbols and the liquid in the center was being drained into near-infinite storage runes, designed roughly from sections of the tag he had just studied. Soon a dry octagon of flooring was available in the room.

The creature began to glare at the boy frantically drawing some sort of large ritual like symbol. " **Brat, what ARE you doing over there? And what did you do to the cage seal?** "

Naruto absently continued to draw. "Over here I am drawing a custom version of the mind seal from the wall over there. Except this one will self-destruct after a certain amount of time. Once activated, I'll basically become comatose for a bit."

The fur wall chuckled, watching as another seal shattered on the wall, nearly the last one actually. It was one of the two that forced the boy's chakra coils to expand, while reducing his ability to control them. " **So you wish to die while unable to think? That is actually a wise move, I'm impressed.** "

The boy looked up at the fox… with a foxy grin of his own. "Actually, I'm hoping that the one way entrance I created in YOUR seal will be too tempting for this goo to resist. This seal will just keep me from being targeted, since I have obviously already been destroyed, right? Have fun fur ball!" With a nearly hysterical laugh, Naruto smashed his palm into the seal, collapsing into a near-death-like state as the shocked fox began to scream in rage and the last seal on the wall cracked, allowing a thick black ooze to invade the room.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Iguana coughed some blood into his hand. The fumes from the experiments had indeed cost him physically, but watching this child-like demon writhe in pain was worth it all.

He had already used what little sealing he knew to trap the sound of this room, and had killed the Anbu on shift to watch the child… so he should have lots of time to watch the show before exploding the room with all the tags the had been slowly pasting around.

After all, there was no reason to hold back. Dying was guaranteed, so why not go out with a bang? He had spent most of his life's savings on tags over the last week from different vendors using disguises, claiming a highly destructive mission was coming up soon.

And in a way, it was.

He looked back at the monster.

It was glorious.

The creature's right arm had already dissolved into a black goo with some strange sort of blue fungus trying to grow out of it. The left had just turned into a light gray color and started crumbling, as if burned to ash. Both legs looked shriveled, drained of all liquid.

The child's husk was covered in black, throbbing veins. His eyes were bleeding heavily, and were cloudy. Quite likely blind. He had ceased screaming an hour ago, and had stopped gurgling thirty minutes after that. Yet his body still had a heartbeat, if the rhythmical pulsing and expressions of pain were any sign. Hell, he still had a torso, as that evil red chakra kept leaking out to attempt and repair the most essential organs and nerves.

Even that energy was dying.

Iguana chuckled as blood escaped his lips. Even if this soon-to-be corpse caused the worse plague ever known due to the horrendous creation he had infested it with, Iguana would still be a hero to this village.

He had achieved what the fourth Hokage couldn't.

Slightly swaying he cackled as his trembling fingers gently added another explosive tag to the walls of the room where the monster slept.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Kurama, King of the Bijuu, Nine-Tailed Fox, The Walking Apocalypse, The Red Death… was terrified.

Black goo was slowly entering his prison.

Again, he created a barrier of pure demonic energy, trying to delay the inevitable.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew this was his fault. He could have easily burned this goo out of the boy's body, no problem. Would have been near instant cure. Honestly, if he had ever worked with that human brat, his healing would have already surpassed regeneration, to the point where memories and such would have been stored in the cells. Losing a head would have only been an annoyance!

At the very least, he could have ignored this goo and been invincible to its advances as the child died.

But no, he had carefully modified his energy and fed it to the viruses, the poisons, the raw bloodlines and who knew what else was in that needle.

It had adapted. Stunningly quickly, it had modified itself, using the energy provided to combine the random strains and chemicals into this goo, this black with red veins goo that continued to improve itself as it advanced.

Worse, near the moment of Kurama's victory, he had released a massive wave of his power to the goo. Feeding it so that the seals would corrode at an even more advanced pace, feeding it to watch a little boy fall into depression and sadness.

Now the goo knew how to eat a Bijuu, and Naruto had provided it an open door with a welcome mat.

He watched more and more goo entering the prison, and Kurama realized that the goo had no way of warning the rest of itself that it could not escape here. As far as it knew, this was the kitchen so everyone should come on down.

It was likely that this goo would just gather here, behind a seal created by the Death God, the Shinigami himself. That IT would become the power behind these complicated seals.

As the fox backed into the farthest corner possible, raising barriers of blood red corrupting chakra, some small part of him wondered what this new power source would do with the child, now crippled and near death's door. Another glimmer of what he used to be wondered what would have happened if he hadn't dedicated his existence to the destruction of that same child.

Most of him raged in fear and anger, as he continued to delay the end of his existence.

The black ooze just continued to fill the container and advance, the energy forcing it to evolve, to handle more extreme densities of power, to start using tactics and begin to organize itself. Unknown to either of the combatants, the ooze was slowly waking up as sentient chakra became a progressively larger percentage of its new body.

Right now, it simply knew hunger. Hunger, and that there was a large, self-energizing power-source just beyond this burning delicious energy.

The goo advanced.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Iguana was almost sitting on the bed now, watching the monsters slow demise with near-orgasmic delight. It was showing its true form now, almost nothing but a skull with flesh melted off, connected to the heart and one lung, the other long since dissolving into a thick black goo with red veins. He could actually see the brain inside the skull now, watch as the lung desperately breathed air, as the heart frantically beat what blood was left, as the red glow holding this collection of parts and hysterically attempted to fill the few remaining arteries with newly created blood.

It was beautiful.

Nothing could hurt more than this, he knew. No revenge could be more complete than this.

For a silent moment, a blissful moment, he saw the few parts on the bed just... stop. It was now nothing more than a monument to his greatness, a small alter of cursed matter to bless his dead family with.

As he realized that the show was finally over, he turned back to the wall of explosives and began to make the final hand signs to turn this apartment, and possibly a small section of town, into pure fire. To cleanse everything.

He froze. There had been a noise.

A wet noise, but a noise never the less.

He turned back to the few bits of the monster that had made it to the end... and there was now a soft gray glow. Not the red of the demon, and it contained none of the palpable hate and rage that the demon spewed everywhere. Nor the blue energy of the bastard child that it had disguised itself as before.

The ooze on the bed was slowly being covered in gray energy as well.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

The goo was confused.

It had eaten the power source, studied it, and found memories.

Somehow, it also now knew what memories were.

Within moments, thousands of chunks of ooze each examined individual memory fragments, cleaned them up, identified their contents, and began duplicating them throughout the goo. Most of the goo was a virus, well, physically anyway. Most of its mind however was now sentient chakra.

When the goo had entered the seal, it had found two other globs of sentient chakra. One a golden haired man, one a fire haired woman.

Their memories were sent off for examination as well.

The concept of backing up memories, of distributing evenly the abilities and powers the goo had encountered were sort of a side effect of being composed of a virus, really. Absorb what will make itself stronger, hide when possible, and most importantly... Survive.

And as the memories were spread, a new consciousness was born. The memories of a loving father, an adoring mother, and an angry (And angst filled) fox swirled around. If this had been all available, the result would have likely been a neutral gender creature with a bitter outlook on life who would have looked out for 'That Brat'.

But the fox also contained the memories of Naruto, which had vastly impressed the goo. That boy was a survivor placed in a position of certain death and had within moments created near-master level seals with no practice just to save himself. ALL the memories and possible personalities were impressed by this.

More importantly as far as goo-development was concerned, the fox had been sealed before.

The chakra globs of the Father and Mother were not the full souls of either of course, and did not contain all of their memories. They were created near death, and added to a seal created by the Shinigami himself, just so the poor child could at least know what they looked like.

The red haired mother had been the foxes previous container. And like with Naruto, the creature had a full copy of her memories, from childhood to her last day on earth.

Before her was yet another female Uzumaki. Wife of the first Hokage, Mito Uzumaki, had her full life memorized and found, as well as all the experiences of building a ninja village in trying times, harder times. Where those who were not the best were killed constantly.

And many years before the Uzumaki were well established, they tested the Bijuu sealing process forcing Kurama within their priestess. He did manage to escape after only 9 years, but still saw her life of worship and hardship.

With the full memories of three powerful women, the angst filled years of wandering around blasting stuff really couldn't compare. And the few memories of that loving father were vastly outvoted.

So the goo was now female. With 2/5 loving Naruto and 4/5 generally nice and kind people.

If he hadn't been eaten alive, Kurama would have rolled in his prison.

After looking through the memories, she crafted a physical form as well, for being a pile of goo was not exactly amazing for someone who had a self-image now. Again, 4/5 of the people had red hair/fur, and a combination of the three women's bodies gave her a lovely shape that could still kick butt when required. Her blue eyes were pretty much just copied from Naruto, since both parents had thought they were precious and the two older women loved babies in general.

And... now she was stuck in the cage.

Great.

She absently had some of her body expand and form a fairly comfortable red cushioned chair. Honestly she wasn't sure why Kurama had stayed so darn huge all the time. At her current size it was practically the size of a huge training field. She absently assigned some of her body to go off and design some methods of containing extra mass without extra weight. With the full memories of three master sealers (And their husbands that dabbled in sealing as well), combined with Naruto's non-restricted mind... well it really shouldn't be a problem. At least, not one Naruto SHARES access to his mind.

Once he wakes up.

How long did he set that seal for anyway?

She absently felt something trying to push its way into her mind, like a genjutsu, an illusion technique. Oh, it was the seal demanding action to be taken to preserve the host. She supposed it was the strange way her mind was set up that prevented her from having to do anything.

Not that she wouldn't of course, this was little Naruto.

She allowed mental access... and froze.

His body was REALLY messed up. To the point where the seal had essentially given her near full access and was basically begging her to do anything. Hell, the flesh the seal was on had already dissolved, and if it hadn't been created by the literal deity of death and decay it would have been destroyed.

She frantically began investigating, gray power flowing. Her minds started creating new copies of memories, anything about what a healthy young boy should be like, anything about how Naruto actually was, anything about what positive or negative changes she could make.

It was nearly overwhelming. He was missing damn near everything right now of course, but his previous body was near death all the time ANYWAY. His poor housing and constant break in's had caused rough sleeping habits, wearing down his sanity. He never got enough high quality food when young, stunting his growth. The poisons and particles added to his diet HAD increased his tolerances but had also done permanent damage. Kurama had deliberately healed everything as little as possible to force corrupted chakra to be used nearly all the time.

True that same process had enabled the boy to handle corrupted chakra at an unheard of level, but the continuous healing using said method was inefficient and had aged the cells involved incredibly, lowering his life span by dozens of years. If he hadn't been an Uzumaki with a strong body he would not have made it passed 40. As it was currently, his potential 100-200 year lifespan was impossible.

And that didn't cover those blasted seals! That was likely a root ninja as well, from the Forth Hokage's memories, so that old man Danzo must have set those up. By unsealing them, he likely would have earned Naruto's trust thanks to the 'amazing' advancements in ability... except of course for all the damage caused in him as a developing child.

She was glad that the first emotion she remembered was Naruto's parent's love, because she was learning hate REALLY quickly.

Carefully she took the design of Naruto's brain after the seals were removed and his chakra system from that same moment. Utilizing the medical knowledge picked up from the three older and more complete set of memories, as well as the in depth knowledge of Naruto's body from Kurama's constant attempts to murder the boy, she had this taken care of.

Absently she disabled the pain receptors in his brain as she made sure to take care of this, the most delicate part, first. Right now his mind was the only thing holding the reaper seal in existence, allowing her to fix ANYTHING. As she moved through his brain, she replaced each individual cell one by one with a near-exact copy made from her viral mass. Essentially his new brain would work through her body, allowing her complete access if she ever needed to help in the future.

Technically allowing her to gain full control of Naruto as well, but she had already gained a fair amount of affection for the child at this point.

Distracted, she felt some of the brain that was exposed to the air through his exposed skull gather visual data as well. Her cells could really become anything honestly, the information needed for reconstruction was shared throughout her substance even if it wasn't perfectly duplicated in every cell. Yet. She expected great things from her body parts studying containment methods.

She flinched. That ninja that had started all this was still here... and he was setting up FIRE. Explosive tags that would not only rip Naruto to shreds but then BURN HER! She wouldn't be able to fix him then!

Almost without thought, a red-veined tentacle sank into the goo on the bed from the boy's heart, and a shard of bone nearest to the ninja was quickly mutated, turned into a sharp tip soaked with the fastest acting poison she could produce before it snapped out and hit the man in the neck. His hand which had been about to detonate the tags reflexively grabbed the thick tentacle that had thrust the spike... which formed more sharp thorns, reaching into his arm and digging deep.

It was nearly instantaneous. His body collapsed forward as the tentacle pulled him toward the corpse of the little boy.

Well, at least raw material was available.

She absently sent more tentacles to harvest the jerk who attacked HER Naruto. How dare someone hurt her cuddly whiskered cutie! He had those bright blue eyes, that sunny hair, and those whiskers! Still, while she was grateful to have been injected into Naruto, she recognized that had Kurama not attempted to surprise the boy until it was too late to do anything then her little ninja wouldn't have had time to pull his little stunt, and would have gone through mind-shattering agony.

Her hand waved off some blobs to process the masked man's mind as well. She didn't need it for personality development now that she had found herself, so to speak, but he was clearly another traitor of the village and Naruto would likely like to know why he did it. He also might want to give any relevant info to the Hokage, since he clearly knew how to get past the old man's guards.

She continued to examine each organ and bone, her viral cells slowly copying and replacing each section of Naruto's body with new cells. She would pause every few minutes and revise previous changes as she progressed. While quite an ass, Iguana had gone through some hellish training and gained some interesting resistances that she could pass along to the boy, so at least it wasn't a total waste.

Parts of herself moved off to create shelving for copies of the various memories collected. Maybe Naruto would be interested in them later... or just watch some and hang out a bit. At least she wouldn't be deprived of senses, since the seals couldn't understand the concept of every cell in the body being replaced with her evolving viruses. Like his old body was now being made from sensory organs really. Which seemed gross now. Huh. She guessed the memories were still assimilating with her personality.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto slowly woke up, feeling the last of his chakra draining from the runic circle around him. Well he was still in his mind... seal... thing. That was probably bad.

Of course, he did wake up. So that was probably good.

And there was no screaming fox right now, which was maybe good?

A FAR too chipper voice interrupted his thoughts. "Good Morning!"

He blinked and looked toward the giant cage.

Which currently contained a bouncing, physically-gifted red headed woman.

Who was waiving.

He absently waived back, watching her smile grow. "Uh. Hi?"

She ran up and waved again, just behind the bars. "Good morning Naruto! Just so you know, I disabled your pain receptors since I am still healing your body, ok?"

He sat up, noticing that the room was now vastly different. The floor was made of light gray stone, the walls a darker shade, and the roof was a solid black, near obsidian like texture. The piping on the walls were far fewer and thicker, looked brand new, and had tiny labels on them that he couldn't read from here. Heck, the cage itself looked like polished marble at this point, instead of corroded iron bars.

Naruto cautiously walked closer to the very beautiful woman. "So... have you seen a giant fox around here?"

She nodded. "His name was Kurama by the way. I got inside the cage and ate him."

He blinked. "You're the black stuff?"

Her head tilted. "Um. Sort of. You know how Bijuu are made of sentient chakra right?"

He shrugged. "Sure, why not. At least, now I know. So you ate sentient chakra and there fore..."

She turned and walked to a nice looking red chair. "Yep, I also became sentient. A person. But I didn't really have an identity at first. Your mom and dad left parts of their chakra in the reaper seal, which I also consumed. The Fox had also been sealed in several women in the past like your mom, so I got their knowledge as well. The other women were Uzumaki's as well, by the way."

He blinked. "I'm pretty sure I am in shock right now. Yet my head feels more clear now, better even than when those seals cracked." His eyes narrowed. "I'm also gaining access to some additional memories of my own that had been blocked off before." Suddenly he paused. "Wait, what's your name? If you're not just a new version of the fox, I mean."

She stood and gave an elegant curtsy. "I'm a creature created from consuming a Bijuu and formed from viruses, with the memories of ninjas and dying souls. You may call me what you wish, but I haven't chosen a name yet."

Naruto still had a blank facial expression. "How about we call you Vixen for now. I honestly hit my 'freak out' marker WAY long ago."

Vixen smirked. "I'll take it as a compliment. If you want I could add foxy ears and a tail? A bit kinky though."

Naruto nodded. "Yep, already hit my 'freak out' marker. Mind if I go to bed and handle this in the morning?"

She paused. "You may have to wait a bit. I took out the man who originally injected me into you because he was about to blow up your apartment with explosive tags when you were really, REALLY hurt. And I had to absorb him to get enough materials to build you a new body... which I am not done doing yet."

He froze. "I ate someone?"

Vixen blinked. "Uh... sort of. If it helps, I have been replacing your body with viruses, so I am pretty sure it doesn't count as cannibalism."

Naruto just stared at the woman. Cute, but handle with care, clearly. Still... "He was an ass, right?"

She nodded. "I'm still processing his memories into things we can use, but I have found that over half of all the poisons and chemicals that have been used on you are either from him directly or from people he hired. Along with a lot of the abuse and bad rumors. He also helped coordinate the mobs that chased you and made the reports about those mobs vanish before they got to the Hokage."

Naruto absently thought about it. "Well, screw him then. Promise me that we won't eat good people?"

Vixen relaxed on the red throne. "Sure Naruto, I won't consume anyone unless you tell me to. This was a combination of karma and survival really, it should be a common event. Although you might crave raw and rare meat more often. Easy to handle with a bit of hunting."

The boy had basically the longest day ever at this point. "So if I can't get out, what should I do while waiting for you to fix it all?"

She waved her arm, the goo of the chair expanding into a couch before reforming to red cloth and cushions. "You could rest with me if you want."

He absently stared at the comfy looking couch before shrugging. "Well, if you were gonna harm me you would have done so already. Why not."

As he walked through the bars, half expecting her to open her jaws and consume him and the other half honestly not caring at this point, he was pleasantly surprised to make it to the couch in one piece.

When she pulled his head onto her lap and stroked his hair, which was the most pain free human...ish contact he had experienced in years, he felt his body relaxing more than it had in months.

Falling asleep, he absently thought that if he had made a terrible decision, at least it was a comfortable way to die.

Vixen meanwhile was trying not to coo or overwhelm the cute little boy. She was CERTAINLY going to ensure that he kept those adorable whisker marks.

In the waking world, the dissolving corpse once known as Iguana slowly transformed into black ooze, which (along with all the other materials on poor Naruto's bed) began to absorb into the rapidly rebuilding body of the most unpredictable ninja.

Even though most of his shell was still being reconstituted, the corpse like body seemed to somehow relax and find peace.

Hours later, the shift change of guards had a ninja nearly crap himself when he realized his predecessor was missing, the boy's room was covered in enough explosive tags to level a small town, and the child himself was using ripped but perfectly clean Anbu clothing as covers.

The Hokage would not be amused.


	2. I've got a friend in me

The Third Hokage, Hiruzen Sarutobi, the God of Shinobi, the Professor, and currently pissed-off-sort-of-Grandfather to Naruto Uzumaki was less than happy.

He was currently watching the boy rest on a hospital bed while his personal guard ran information quietly near him, keeping him up to date on current village activities.

After such a long and stressful night, this was just icing on the cake really.

First he found out that Naruto had been failed during his exam mostly due to sabotage. His written test had been harder than the others, he had been given incorrectly balanced throwing equipment, had been matched up with the class prodigy during combat examination, and had been forced to exhibit the only technique that was IMPOSSIBLE for a boy with a demon in his gut to achieve.

Even then he should have scrapped by with the lowest grade. He had barely passed the harder test, yet someone had modified his answers. His equipment had actually scored as a pass, until one of the throws was disqualified for being thrown 'Without dignity'. His combat match had been called due to his 'un-ninja-like like combat' when he hit the Uchiha kid instead of taking all the hits like usual. And of course, the impossible technique requested.

That traitor Mizuki, just some Chunin teacher really, had taken those steps and more just to ensure the boy's failure. The cause behind those actions was his planned treason against the village. Using Naruto as a distraction, he planned to escape after making the boy take an impossible mission to steal the Forbidden Scroll from the Hokage himself.

And he would have escaped as well, free to give secrets to the village's enemies... until Naruto had done the impossible.

With almost no chakra control, while wearing bright orange, without any official stealth training, that boy had snuck into the Hokage's Office, broke several high level security seals almost by accident without setting them off, found the true Forbidden Scroll from the dozens of fakes and duplicates, and utilized the Hokage's perversion against him to open an escape route.

That he had avoided the tracking Anbu teams while also learning one of the more dangerous and difficult technique's on the scroll in less than a few hours went beyond unbelievable.

So finding out that the boy had somehow taken down a Chunin, saved another Chunin (His teacher, Iruka), protected the Forbidden Scroll from being stolen away from the village, and STILL avoided the Anbu teams while helping an injured man all the way back to his office... well he clearly had unknown talents.

And right as he had begun to relax after such an eventful day, he had been given an alert that Naruto had been found in an unusual and deadly situation. That one of his more loyal Anbu guards had been murdered by ANOTHER hidden traitor... who had then apparently stripped himself nude, gave his clothing as a blanket to a young boy, covered the walls with primed exploding notes, and vanished.

Honestly, the ninja under his command were strange enough without some random murdering stripper running around.

Yet poor Naruto... seemed perfectly fine. A little thin perhaps, but snoozing away.

And he wouldn't wake up.

It would have been a larger concern if he had any injuries, but all the doctors had claimed he was beyond perfect health according to their scans. Just... asleep.

The old man sighed as he lit his ornate pipe again, breathing deep. At least the boy's current guard squad would protect him. These were carefully selected from his best, and were least likely to attack an orphan with a heavy burden.

The usual tams had been sent out to gather info about the missing Anbu, Iguana.

Before long, he would finally know what the hell had happened in that room, the one that an elite explosion squad was slowly clearing of over-powered explosion tags.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto nuzzled his pillow. It was warm, smelled like some sort of flower, and soft. If it would stop giggling everything would have been great.

His irritation fell away as fingers gently ran through his golden hair, and softly stroked his whisker marks. If this was a dream, he would enjoy it as long as he could.

Vixen was having the time of her life. Sure, she had just spent the last few hours frantically reconstructing her host into something mostly like he used to be, but she had also been able to rub those cute little whiskers on the boy's face and caress his shining bright hair.

Naruto awoke fully with a jerk when he realized he was purring. He was NOT going to purr, he was a manly thirteen year old ninja damn it!

And he was immediately wrapped up in the warmest hug he had ever known. "SO CUTE! Aw little Naru-kun, with your little whiskers and those eyes!"

He pulled away, flinching as he awaited the assault that Sukura always had waiting if he ever crossed the line... or asked her on a date... or waved... or was in the area.

As he felt her arms pull him back on the chair into squishy hug land, he realized that those brain seals must have been hurting him more than he thought to pursue someone so abrasive and abusive and consider it true love.

Naruto also decided that these hugs were awesome. As he was currently being hugged from behind, his head was pressed against soft somethings that were quite distracting. He relaxed even more, smelling those far off flowers. "Good morning, Vixen. Is my body fixed up?"

Her arms squeezed the boy. "Not completely, but it's better than it was before. No scar tissue, and I fixed up the cells that were prematurely aged by Kurama's power when he healed you improperly. Each cell of your body is now a virus, so your healing will be through the roof and I'll have direct control of your systems if needed."

Her bright blue eyes leaned over his head, looking into his. "The seal was changed slightly due to how much of you I control now. Thankfully I actually like you a lot thanks to your Dad and Mom's memories, not to mention how absolutely adorable you are."

Naruto frowned. "Handsome. Or Rugged. Or Manliest of men." He squirmed in the warm hug. "Not adorable. Ninja."

She squeed and swung him into a huge hug. "Oh my little ninja of awesome not-cuteness! How am I to ever let you go? Oh, I am going to miss petting you once you have to go wake up."

Vixen gently placed him back on the stone floor and crouched down to his eye level. "You know, you could modify the seal a bit more and visit whenever you like while sleeping! We could hang out, train, or just cuddle."

Naruto blushed hard, but the idea sounded very tempting. "I'm not going to just let you out, you know. If nothing else, the Old Man would freak if I released the seal on the same night I found out about the fox."

She just waved an arm and walked toward the bars. "I just want control over the inside of my cage. Maybe set it up to look like the outside, set up a steam or creak for us to swim in or something."

They actually debated what would be reasonable. The boy honestly had developed a lot of trust in the woman for several reasons, not the least of which was her NOT hurting him when he absently had given her complete access to his mental avatar in the cage. He had really been out of it back then apparently.

In the end, he helped her pass a copy of his senses into the seal, which she set up on some big screens and had set up some goo to act like a recording device, so they could review memories like movies and she could keep up with the world. In return, she had her viral cells pass a rough 6th sense of a sort to him, so he could feel his surroundings to a degree.

After a long debate, he eliminated the mandatory 'Fix me' alerts and changed them to 'Alert me' message, so she would know what to fix if she wasn't already aware, but it wouldn't try to control her anymore. He also reduced her restrictions, so that she could more easily control the cells of his body (To prevent accidental infection of others, although his cells were individually intelligent enough to commit suicide if he got too far away unless told otherwise).

Naruto had always tried to get along with others even when being hurt all those years. So finding a huge angry fox being replaced with a nice pretty red-haired lady made getting along almost TOO easy.

She had shown him the Kyuubi's core though. Apparently the Bijuu generated their unending mass of chakra by splitting the energy into Yin and Yang portions and recombining it in a special pattern.

From Kurama's memories, she found that combining pure yin and yang could be used to create raw matter or chakra from basically nothing, more than the process actually needed to operate. And from his memories, she found that his core was the most complex and the most efficient of all the Bijuu, hence why he could maintain his nine-tailed form.

She had moved the Bijuu's core to a corner of her container, and helped Naruto seal it separately from her. Together they also set up a dense and complex combination of seals and her goo to purify the power as much as possible as it was created.

After some more discussion, they decided to do almost the same thing to HIS chakra storage. Not his chakra coils, which generated new chakra over time, but his core that held that power in preparation for use.

Now that the two cores were separated (And not frantically pushing power into his poor system), he would be able to easily tap into either or both as desired, and could control the mixtures of the two powers as even cleaned of hate and rage the corrupted Bijuu chakra would still act roughly on his system.

Vixen had managed to convince Naruto to make the change mostly thanks to his new cells being able to consume Bijuu energy now. Instead of shortening his life he would actually live LONGER using the corrupted power, which would force his virus cells to heal and rejuvenate when used. And since the cells would no longer die due to exposure, all that energy could be focused on fighting or amplifying the healing process even further.

Naruto would normally heal so fast with just his new viral body that it would be comical. If he actively used his own chakra, he could regenerate lost body parts and change psychically closer to his biologically prime form. Not really getting older or younger, but optimizing his system to be efficient and healthy.

If he used his new source of Bijuu energy though, he would age to 21 physically and stay there. Injuries would instantly vanish, and it was possible that he could simply absorb the energy in attacks used against him and add it to his reserves. Of course, any rocks or fire would still hit him even if he absorbed the power hurling them, but instant regeneration for the win.

Needless to say, Naruto was ecstatic. Just when he gained access to a new training tool (Shadow Clones rock!), he would now be able to recover from almost any training injury, allowing rapid development of an unheard of scale.

As the two discussed the benefits of consuming people (She might be able to copy their skills, bloodlines, memories, or more) or how to do the memory thing without eating humans (Seriously, Naruto got an ick feeling from the idea. Not that it would stop him if it was an enemy and a bastard and they needed info or something, but eww), the boy felt something else inside.

In one day, he had gone from having a beast inside him to having a friend... and he had so few friends. He took that warmth from inside and held it close as the two continued their discussions.

Right now however they were taking a break. Apparently some of Vixen's blobs had figured out how to create containment seals using only chakra, and every cell in Naruto's body was being upgraded. With this, he might even recover if only a few cells escaped total destruction! Oh, and those seals being added included a new power containment seal, which would be filled with either Naruto's chakra or Bijuu chakra.

After all, the Bijuu chakra may be infinite thanks to the Bijuu Core, but HIS wasn't. So now many cells in his body would act like a battery when needed. It would take a long (LONG) time for his chakra to fill them all, and he was already low in energy as it were now, but the trouble would be worth it in the end.

Naruto had never really considered the concept of immortality, but from now on he would be a VERY annoying enemy for others to fight.

First there was the raw power of the 9-tailied Bijuu chakra, and he would be the first human container in history to be able to use nearly all of it. Even containers could get Bijuu chakra poisoning if they went above a certain percentage of power after all, at least before Naruto entered the stage.

Secondly was his body construction (It had taken Vixen a while to get the concept through his head.) It would allow him to sustain unheard of levels of physical damage and fully recover, even the lost of his brain wouldn't matter after this final upgrade as his cells would contain a continuous backup of his memories.

And finally, he could consume matter (Plant, human, animals in general), convert it into a highly concentrated form Vixen had come up with (She called it Biomass), and either attack or heal with it, storing the excess in his cell seals.

He grinned from his new favorite position (Hug #13) on the couch, feeling her fingers comb his hair. She was rapidly becoming one of his most precious people, honestly. He was glad she was injected into his life.

Vixen smirked. "Aww, I wuv you too Naruto!"

His blush was vivid. Mental Note: She was now hooked into his thinking process. Thank Kami he hadn't hit puberty yet, she was gorgeous.

Her smirk grew. "Oh my, why thank you! More Cuddles!"

His face was on fire. Apparently there may have been a larger downside than he had initially realized.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto was walking back and forth in front of a large board wall inside what used to be Kurama's cage. It now looked like a large chunk of forest with a series of doors on a wall, labeled for the various subsections of the reaper seal.

He pointed at the board. "So to reiterate: These are the rules that should always be followed unless we decide otherwise, agreed?"

Vixen was reclining sinfully in a slightly too small chair, her curves pressed together as she held her chin in thought. "I suppose so. Why can't I watch the screens during those times though?"

He flushed. "Because it is embarrassing having someone watch me use the restroom. Or bathe. I already gave into letting you watch me sleep, although I'm not sure WHY exactly."

She nodded. "Because you are absolutely cute-tastic when you sleep. With your little frog hat, the whisker marks, and those footie pajamas. You could sell tickets really."

Naruto frowned. "Again with the cuteness. Anyway, especially as I get older it will become very embarrassing. Nudity may not be a huge taboo with same genders when it comes to bathing, but I assume you don't want to be a pervert."

Vixen grinned. 'Well, almost every ninja I remember was a pervert at some level. Heck, your mom chose your name from a book by Jiraiya, who became an erotic novelist." She watched him face palm. "If you would like, you could watch me bathe? Then we would be even!"

He blushed as he held his head in his hands. "I have an attractive female pervert in my head. Wonderful."

Naruto felt warm arms wrap him up. "Only for you, Naru-kun. And any woman you hook up with when you get older. And maybe a friend or two who decide to join in." She couldn't hold in the smirk as his face got redder and redder, her lips whispering into his ear.

He gently pushed her away and walked robotically toward the exit. "Well look at the time! Guess I better wake up and stuff. Yes sir, nothing to think about here, nope!"

She chuckled and checked the board again. "Oh Naru! You forgot to ban watching while you are busy with personal time!"

The door slammed close as he exited. Oh he was just precious.

The Third Hokage jerked as Naruto sat up from a deep sleep, blushing deeply and growling. "That blasted woman! And I KNOW she is doing it on purpose."

They blinked at each other before the boy sheepishly waved. "Uh... Hi Old Man!" He glanced around at the well known room that was practically assigned to him at the hospital. Too many attempts on his life here had forced the boy to have his own accommodations. "Oh, back here again. Meh, could have been worse."

The old ninja blinked before chuckling. "Indeed it could have been. Are you aware of what happened before you were brought here?"

Naruto sighed and gave him a look. "I know more than I want to, honestly. Gramps, can you lock us down? If what I contained was a huge secret, then this one will likely blow it away."

Hiruzen Sarutobi paused before nodding. A few hand gestures and the empty room became much emptier, the doors and windows were blocked by chakra conductive cloth, and he sat down next to the bed. "We are secured, Naruto. What happened."

The conversation was long, notes were taken (Thanks to absorbing Iguana's memories), combinations of disbelief mixed with horror were expressed, and an old man felt positively ancient. He had been so close to losing his surrogate grandchild, whom had experienced years of abuse due to his failure at capturing a high level threat from his own man.

After nearly an hour of conversation, as well as a very strange introduction using the boy's body to a woman who apparently was a virus that had consumed the closet thing to a demon god that existed in this land (And she was also very polite, surprisingly), the old man wasn't sure how to handle this.

Oh it would be a major secret, completely classified, no question. And he had already taken a break to command a large amount of meat, vegetables, and milk to be brought in for the boy's full recovery. But Naruto had basically just become a heavy hitter over night, even without further ninja training.

This had happened before of course. The more recent example involved the Kurama Clan, whom surprisingly shared a name with the nine-tailed fox according to Naruto. They had an amazing but rarely awakening bloodline that allowed them to make illusions real, fake fire that burned flesh and more. That same bloodline also killed many of the clan due to young children gaining power and then losing control. Naruto had a bit of a moment after hearing that until Vixen calmed him down, and had promised to work on his control first and foremost to prevent such a thing from happening to him.

In the end, the Hokage watched as Naruto's arm became a black mass of red veined tentacles and devoured the trays of food and large jugs of milk. He was called the professor after all, and had seen bloodlines stranger than this one. Those fish people for example. Or that one man who could partially turn into a cow.

Even as he watched Naruto's body fill out with muscles and his skin look brighter and healthier, they continued to talk in a strange three person, two body way.

No, she wasn't a bloodline. But she could consume people WITH bloodlines, and might be able to grant them to Naruto and pass them on to future children. (The boy's face went red at the thought.)

No, Naruto was not contagious by default, although he could create viruses as needed if he had seen them before (Or designed one). Yes she was able to create anti-viruses and antidotes. Yes, if Naruto was willing she could create said antidotes, give instructions on how to create them, and provide them to the hospital... for a fee. Her boy needed funds. (Naruto's blushes were cute.)

No, she wasn't loyal to the village, she was loyal to Naruto only. No she wouldn't change that. (Naruto was emphatic that as he was a future Hokage, she would eventually BECOME loyal since he would sort of be the village at that point. Kind of.)

Yes she could consume other Bijuu. They were weaker than Kurama after all, so why not? No, she wouldn't go hunting them unless Naruto wanted to. (And he really, really didn't.)

Yes, she knew about past containers, as did Naruto. Yes, they had spent some time talking about who his parents were. No, they wouldn't tell anyone.

Honestly, it was a conversation that went far better than the Hokage expected, especially once he found out that an 13 year old had started randomly changing a seal that called Death itself to power it. Now THAT had nearly given him a heart attack.

Hiruzen had already passed on several pages of notes such as who had assisted Iguana (Detained and sent to interrogation), what weaknesses the traitor had opened in the system to get his work done, and what resources he may have hidden or stolen (Like the supplies from Orochimaru.)

He had also decided to delay the team formations for a month (He was the Hokage, this was NOT a majority vote people!) to give the boy time to recover, train, and prevent accidents due to his increased power (Naruto had already squished a metal cup that had water in when he laughed at a joke.) It would also give him time to re-evaluate the graduated class, seeing as a traitor had been involved in most of the steps.

As the old man unsealed the room and started sending off commands, he uncharacteristically grinned as he went to fight his worst foe, paperwork.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto smiled as he nearly bounced out of his apartment, heading to the training fields. Vixen had been a big help smoothing everything out with the old man, apparently having the memories of women married to previous Hokage's had given her a lot of experience with this.

Gramps had also been VERY interested about the extra stuff Naruto had found out about the Shadow Clones, and had promised to update the Forbidden Scroll. Apparently only those with high Jonin or more reserves could even use it correctly, which no one was aware of before now.

While the old man could make 5 or 6 clones safely the wrong way, the more time a person experienced over their life the more of a black-lash would occur. As he had gotten older and older, the duplicated memories would of course grow larger as well, increasing the pain and danger involved.

Now he could only make 2 clones the correct way, but as they processed the data the significant lack of mental strain meant that the Hokage could actually use them for dull repetitive tasks without a health risk... And he had immediately started talking about how much time he was going to save, having a true clone handle the paperwork and overwhelming number of council meetings.

He had classified the technique update as well, basically having only Naruto and himself able to abuse this clone technique without mental issues. He may eventually let trusted others know, but this was too much of a game changer to risk being exposed to enemies or every Tom, Dick, or Kakashi.

Now Naruto had a steady supply of meat, vitamins (Vixen had insisted on this and he hadn't protested since he could absorb them without putting them in his mouth), and vegetables (Again, arm consumption for the win!). What he didn't need currently Vixen was compressing into Biomass and storing in his cell seals. He could now survive weeks without food technically, and they weren't even close to saturating his cells yet!

He was a bit bummed out about how low his chakra levels were right now though. His coils were being constantly drained filling the seals on the cells... such as the cells that MADE UP his chakra coils. In contrast, it had only taken twenty minutes to fill all the Bijuu cell seals with power. As strong as Naruto was, that kind of energy generation was still beyond him.

Still, Vixen had pointed out how this was the perfect time to build up chakra control, as he could only make about 10 clones right now and their lower reserves would greatly assist in the chakra control exercises.

Naruto had initially been pumped that Vixen knew not only this villages chakra control methods, but the more complicated and useful ones from the Uzumaki homeland, the Village hidden in the waves. Most of his clan (And he still got a warm feeling knowing that at one point, he had actually had a clan!) had largish chakra reserves at birth too, even if they were far lower than what he had.

Their natural high levels had forced them to create a lot of variety when it came to chakra control techniques, and they traded heavily with other hidden villages to gain their training methods as well.

But he couldn't learn them yet, as his reserves blew theirs clear out of the water in comparison. So he was starting at the most basic local level for now that was actually doable, Leaf sticking and (New to him) tree walking.

Of course, now that he had guidance everything was going better. First of all, he had 10 clones to learn with and give refined experience as he learned. Secondly, he was doing the leaf method backwards, starting with his body plastered with leaves an trying to slowly reduce coverage until only a single leaf was being stuck.

It was slow going.

Tree walking was actually going a bit better, as it was designed with larger chakra use in mind even if it was trickier than the basic leaf sticking exercise. It was actually trickier than wall walking, which most ninja everywhere learn. The bark can easily be crushed or torn off, requiring just enough chakra to reinforce the bark and hold onto the wood behind it, but not enough to cause the bark to explode trying to contain its own power.

This technique was a bit of a Village hidden in the leaves specialty, and could easily be combined with leaf sticking.

In theory.

Not that Naruto cared at the moment, as he cursed the universe after falling from the tree again. Eventually Vixen suggested he just lay down in front of the tree and practice sticking each foot and releasing it without causing tree damage.

Thankfully time passes when you are young and eager to learn. As each of the 10 clones would reach a thirty minute mark, the one with the best achievement would dispel himself, updating the group. Naruto would pause from his gravity abuse to send a new one off to replace it. And as some of the clones existed for longer and longer without being popped, they began trying more bizarre chakra ideas when they got tired of that damned leaf.

One of the most intriguing concepts happened when a clone decided to try and do a reverse tree walk, causing him to fly up uncontrollably and smack into a tree, dispelling.

Everyone paused, their eyes wide. Combining the attraction of tree climbing with the repelling trick could make them wicked fast. It would even be useful in controlling the momentum of a fight!

The clones had been receiving updates on Naruto Prime's advances at this point, as each popped clone was replaced with a duplicate of the master... who had received all updates up to that point. And when THAT clone popped, the refined information would hit everyone.

So after the idea come out, ALL of them except for Prime tried to repel the ground... and two succeeded without dispelling. A quick refill of clones and one pop later, and all ten could just barely hover off the earth. Until one accidentally pushed another... who slid like he was on ice.

Vixen had laughed when all the clones AND Naruto had stopped their training to try and become the world's best land skater.

Sure he could only go in straight lines and needed to be pushed... for now. But it was one heck of a good chakra exercise (Pushing chakra through the feet was difficult enough to begin with), and this was far more entertaining.

Thus for the first week of training, he focused on earth skating, leaf balancing, and tree climbing, although he only really mastered the last two. He could now skate forward (Quite quickly too), but turning still wasn't working, as the dozens of smacked trees could attest to.

Vixen had stayed busy as well. Reviewing the memories under her control, sharing the most interesting clips from Naruto's Parent's lives while cuddling on the couch, and experimenting with strengthening various bones and muscle groups. It turned out that making all the muscles 'Super Awesome' as Naruto requested actually got in the way, slowing the boy down, and lowered how much power he could apply since so much was wasted on stuff like his ear muscles.

So while the boy had been exercising his chakra control, she had been testing upgrades around his body. Bones needed to break sometimes to reduce pressure wave damage that could injure organs, for example... but she could design where exactly that break would occur, and prevent splintering or other such issues and simplify future healing.

It had also been a fun way to prank the boy, which he secretly enjoyed as well. She would slightly lengthen one leg or arm, causing his careful balancing to go haywire at hilarious times. Or strengthen his hand at the wrong moment so he squished a branch or something. He would have complained more, but this turned out to be amazing with building chakra control as well, forcing him to feel the energy in a more refined way to prevent her pranks from getting him.

Oh, and heh ad found out that he was naked... all the time. Apparently he WASN'T wearing his customized jumpsuit, it had been made of organic fibers and had dissolved with the rest of his clothing during his transformation.

Vixen had simply duplicated his clothing using Biomass, so it was technically a part of him, even though he could actually remove his shirt without issue. But once he lost focus, the shirt would either self destruct or (if close enough), be absorbed back into him.

It explained why he felt so much more comfortable in it, and how he kept changing into his night clothes without remembering undressing. Yet while it was cool and let him do stuff like change clothing to match his environment, he still kept blushing when Vixen would randomly let out a wolf whistle while he thought about it.

Stupid perverted virus.

SHE claimed that she was desensitizing him, so pretty women and female ninja couldn't just tie him up and walk off as he freaked out.

He wasn't buying it, she was having too much fun.

On the plus side, Vixen had introduced him to his new sixth sense. It utilized his individual cells to examine his environment, and displayed outlines of people and objects and animals and stuff as if he could see through them. Apparently Vixen had mixed the signals into his visual input somehow. They were easiest to see if they made noise, smelled strongly, or had lots of body heat or chakra... the stuff his cells could sense easily, in other words.

It made hunting almost unfair, but fresh deer was a wonderful treat. Harvest most of the meat and store it for later, then consume most of the corpse and transform it into biomass or for Vixen to study. The process of consuming actually gave him a strong delicious taste when he did it, like the finest of ramen.

He frowned. He missed ramen.

Vixen sent the sensation of a full hug. "No worries, Naru-kun. Just collect the pelts I had you save from our meals, transform into a random civilian, and you can sell them in the markets and get a big ramen feast!"

His grin lit up the room before he hesitated. "Wait, wouldn't that be bad? You told me all that stuff about balanced meals and vitamins and all that."

She grinned. "Nope! Anything we don't need I'll just transform into Biomass, nothing will get wasted and you can still eat a healthy meal later. Go nuts!"

Naruto's smile almost split his head. A new friend who was his teacher, new skills, more food than he had ever been able to afford before, and now ramen? His life was going great for once.

The boy dashed to get the carefully preserved pelts. He had places to be.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

The village hidden in the leaves was honestly full of confusion right now. Their Hokage seemed to have become thirty years younger overnight, or at least carried himself that way. Changes had been occurring at an unheard of rate.

Now instead of being chained behind his desk, thousands of documents had been processed easily. He had caught up with it, and at the same time had managed to fully read each item, catching dozens of power grabs and elements of treachery within them that would have slipped by his weary eyes in the past.

The torture and interrogation office was full this week. Several spies had been caught, massive abuse of power cases prevented, flat out stupid items tossed in the bin as deserved.

Despite attending every council meeting, the Hokage seemed awake and not worn down at all. Several hidden plans had been frantically pushed back at this unexpected change, and several large scale events had to be scrapped all together or underground elements would have been exposed.

The God of Shinobi was having the time of his life.

And now that he wasn't tied to a desk, he was able to anonymously wander the village under disguise, catching many things that had gone unreported by bribed and compromised ninja on patrol... whom would ALSO be visiting the T&I office soon.

It was honestly the largest house cleaning the village had experienced since the Kyuubi attack, and it was badly needed. Even as a certain organization hidden in the village frantically killed expendable agents and locked down projects, the civilian council almost felt personally under fire as dozens of their past proposals were now being brought back up and dismantled.

The ninjas on the council were actually horrified at how much power had been stolen from them by untrained civilians. The irony of those same civilians now being buried under paperwork even more complicated then what they had shoved onto the Hokage's desk wasn't missed either.

And through it all, he sat like a God watching the chaos get purged from his kingdom, smoking his pipe and overseeing decay and rot being cleansed from his people. Iguana should have never had lasted that long, working against his people. No one else would live to duplicate such a feat.

Indeed, the will of fire was burning brightly in the old man.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Most of the children (Naruto especially) were oblivious to these changes. Adult stuff was adult stuff, we are gonna be ninjas! Or at least Sasuke's wife.

Some kids were not that bright.

Regardless, Naruto's second week of training had been amazing, mostly thanks to Vixen's insistence that he focus on supplementary abilities rather than big sparkly attacks.

Her argument boiled down to this: In close combat, you will win. Period. But you have to actually get close to them in the first place.

So he focused on tree walking, water walking, and earth skating. That they increased his control (More sparkly attacks!) was a great side effect, but he saw her point that unless he could GET to his target, his cool attacks would be worthless.

Then she focused him onto the replacement technique and things got crazy.

She had pointed out to Naruto that the high movement technique was basically a replacement where he focused on the air itself rather than log or a chunk of tree (Apparently he was ripping logs from trees by accident instead of using the prepared ones around the training areas. WAY too much chakra.)

Her theory was wrong, but she didn't tell him that.

The benefit became apparent after only a day or so of practice with clones. He had used it so much that he could replace himself with almost anything roughly his size without a hand sign, silent, and no visual effects or lost chakra clouds.

His clones were now untouchable in combat. They also had the horrifying tendency of covering rocks or logs with explosive notes (Etched into them using Bijuu chakra, corroding the surface) and swapping with them, the chakra involved in switching actually ACTIVATING the now massive explosion.

When he realized his clones got copies of his equipment (They didn't appear nude after all, anything in his clothing got copied too), Naruto added some containment runes on his jacket. Which was part of his body... eww. Anyway, he could reach in easily and unseal a heavily rune covered stone ready to explode, for easy replacement later in the battle.

Only one could be used at a time though, the explosions tended to build on each other and the rocks split into some very sharp shrapnel.

For active combat, he began the practice of designating 'Save me' clones, who would hide as inanimate objects with concealed chakra, whom would actively track the Prime user, swapping if it looked like he would be hit by a major attack.

As they would be destroyed after swapping, the newly moved Naruto would get the refined memories and know exactly where he was, as well as any traps or resources set up by his clone.

His whole fighting style changed with this. Yeah he could now take a hit that would destroy a building with no real issue... but at this point, he didn't have to take a hit at all.

It would drive Sasuke-teme mad.

Thanks to his clone training abuse, tree walking was mastered to the point where he could ignore the process consciously and just have it automatically work, forever. He even fell asleep on the underside of a branch once waiting for his clones to finish up their routine, and had been shocked to wake up just fine later in the day to find the clones betting on when he would finally fall.

Water walking was improving, but still required a good amount of focus. His footing was also more than a bit wobbly. He would work on it.

And he had managed to turn once while earth skating! Sort of. It involved half tree walking with the tip of one foot while skating on the other foot and some of his chakra digging into the earth sort of and a bit of water walking on a chakra air bubble... uh. Well, the crash had been spectacular (To Vixen at least) but it WAS sort of progress. He even managed to earth skate UP A TREE! Once. Mostly. And fell like five feet after. And he still wasn't sure how exactly that had happened.

Still, it meant that he could theoretically learn tree skating! One day. Eventually.

He was still working on it.

Naruto had noticed that the shops had been far nicer recently, even when not in disguise. He assumed it was from his wardrobe change, and his new body structure. It was kind of neat, even if it likely wouldn't last.

While his cells were still sucking his chakra dry, he had managed to increase his overall capacity with careful experimentation with Vixen, expanding his coils using purified Bijuu chakra and then healing the damage. So now he could handle 20 clones to work with instead of only 10, and the increase in learning was actually more than simply double.

With one clone, you learned twice as fast. With two, one would pop helping the other understand the concept better before IT popped, increasing the quality of what you learned, even if the time training and content covered was the same.

With twenty clones, by the time Naruto popped them all (One after the other of course), all the information was rich and detailed, as well as very nuanced and covering very experimental concepts.

By only popping the best ones and replacing them, it was like the other 19 (and Prime) kept having Eureka moments all the time.

So his control of the Shadow Clone Technique was rapidly reaching a level beyond master just through use alone. It would go well with his advancing tree walking skills and hopefully soon-to-be awesome water walking skills.

Earth skating was still proving to be one of the hardest exercises he had ever tried, hell, hardest he had ever heard of. Vixen was proud.

At least by the end of the day, he could abandon his horribly sore body and enjoy some cuddle time while sleeping. He may be getting addicted to it.

Hugs rocked.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Vixen had come up with the opinion that Naruto's fighting style... didn't really exist. He had power, reflexes, and healing, but his fighting style at the moment was 'Replace myself' instead of dodging, countering, etc.

Oh he was good enough that he could easily live with just this, but the less abilities he needed to use the more power for fun skills later on in the fight.

So she had convinced him to ask the Old Man for someone who knew taijitsu, fighting techniques. After an intense question session about how he felt about spandex and the color green (And hadn't THAT conversation been awkward), he had been sent to this training ground. One that sounded like it was infested with some sort of shouting theater group.

He subconsciously shifted his clothing into a brown camouflage pattern as he walked. Vixen had pointed out that multiple shades of brown with undefined or semi-random shapes would be better for hiding... and then proved it by ambushing him in her woods a few times.

On one side was a cute girl with brown hair who was spinning something sharp around her fingers and a boy who was probably a Hyuga based on how far that stick must be up his ass. Oh, and he had blank or white eyes.

The other side of the clearing was a blur of green and the sound of impacts as a man with huge eyebrows was crashing into... a smaller version of himself.

They also seemed to have a strong opinion on Youth. Hopefully not a euphemism for anything.

Naruto slid next to the girl, watching the two. This type of spar had clearly happened before, as the patterns were toned down for the smaller fighter to keep up with the massive speeds displayed. Idly waiting with his hands in his pockets, he watched.

And watched. Damn they had enthusiasm. And endurance.

Turning to the girl, he gave a small smile. "Hi!"

She nearly lept straight up. "EEP!"

Instantly Naruto found himself held by the large green clothed giant and looking face first at a fairly threatening fist from the smaller green boy, whom now stood between him and the girl. The stuck up one was clearly shocked but was trying to look cool, aka 'I didn't move'.

Naruto blinked as he twisted, feeling his arm pop out of its socket. "Oh. Hi! Didn't mean to interrupt your spar, I just got tired of waiting and wanted to introduce myself to your team, since they were just watching." He didn't catch the horror on the other kid's faces as he continued to turn, his arm audibly breaking and the sound of torn flesh making quite an impact on them. "Are you the one Gramps said was really good with taijitsu?"

The teacher blanched slightly at the massive damage done to the child's arm, quickly releasing it. "I apologize for the rough handling, you youthful student. Will you accept help getting the Hospital?"

Naruto paused, looked at his arm, and it made a nasty sounding crunch as it forced itself back into his socket, all blood being absorbed into his clothing. "No worries, I heal really well. I just found out though that my education was kind of deliberately sabotaged so I don't really have a fighting style now." He looked at the amazed team. "I asked old man Hokage and he said if I had any issues finding a good style for me that I should come here and ask you, Might Gai-sensei. I am willing to work hard with any advice you would feel comfortable providing."

The stuck up boy interjected. "If you are unprepared then it is your fate to fail. Accept it and abandon such pitiful attempts at fixing your obvious flaws."

Naruto blinked at the boy. "Well, fuck you too." Turning away from the sputtering child he grinned at the giggling girl. "So like I was saying, 'Hi!' I'm Naruto Uzumaki, future Hokage of this village and soon-to-be awesomeness. What's your name?"

She shook his hand with a grin. "Tenten, future weapon mistress and accurate with anything."

The green clad boy threw up a fist. "YOSH! I am the most YOUTHFUL Lee! Do you truly wish to join us in our youthful exercises to prepare ourselves for the glorious future!?"

He blinked. "Um. Yes?"

Tenten sighed. "I should warn you now, they train at unusual levels. You probably won't last five minutes until you get used to it."

Naruto grinned. "If I use all my abilities I only need to sleep fifteen minutes every three days while continuously working. I'm not afraid of hard work. Most of my life, that was all I had going for me to begin with."

Suddenly he was lifted into the air as the green giant gripped his collar. "YOSH! Then join us as we explode into youthfulness! We shall start with 100 laps around the village wall, so you can prepare yourself for when we can get you some weights to prevent the loss of your youthful spirit!"

He gave a hesitant smile. "Oh... Ok. Well, let's go then!"

Two green suits screamed "YOSH!" easily overlapping the brooding white eyed boy and the girl as they groaned.

This would be an experience.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto was so tired that even in his mind, Vixen had to drag him to the couch for some cuddle time.

Once the crazy eyebrow dude realized that he wasn't getting tired, he had quizzed him about all sorts of stuff then created a training method custom tailored for his inhuman abilities and recovery rate.

And it had worked wonders for this last week. While his 20 clones had been trained in a fighting style that focused on avoidance and hard hitting counters (Almost no kicks, you can't dodge or accelerate properly without legs on the ground in this style), his main body had been through hell.

It had almost been worth it considering the shocked looks on the three kids when he took a full strength punch from Gai-sensei and recovered near instantly.

Of course, finding out that he didn't have to hold back when sparing Naruto had made Gai ecstatic and damned ruthless. He forced Naruto to continue practicing his new fighting style while Gai himself changed style constantly.

He was a master fighter, no doubt about it. Each style was individual and polished in quality to an unholy sheen. It was a rough process, trying to defend such attacks.

Naruto grew from this though. The whole point was to provide experience about other styles and how to handle them with his new one, but he was learning tatics and more along the way.

With his amazing learning capacity, near-instant recovery time, and being taught by a true professional, Naruto was beginning to be a scary fighter even without his other near-godlike abilities. The advances were even more pronounced when considering that Vixen was actively monitoring which muscle groups were being used the most and enhancing them, causing Naruto to require less oxygen and produce more power efficiently.

Naruto's progress was damn near terrifying. Even Neji (Stuck up Hyuga boy) was now watching him warily.

He groaned as Vixen's fingers began working out his knotted muscles, both in this mindscape and releasing tension in his physical body at the same time. Best. Friend. Ever.

She worked on his shoulders as he relaxed, smiling gently. This had been a lot of fun for her as well. While her cutie was relaxing in here with her, she was able to disconnect his senses (While keeping then open watching for trouble, ninjas made paranoia look laid back.) Without Naruto feeling it, each night she experimented with modifying his body and blood chemistry to try and provide new weapons or tools using his own flesh.

Generating his ninja tools using only bone was simple, learning how to modify those bones to be sharper and stronger had taken days. She also used tiny parts of his hand and arm as a testing area, designing a variety of muscle types and hardened skin, even bone plating.

After Naruto had eaten or absorbed those animals (The raw parts using his arm, anyway), she had been experimenting with recreating horns, scales, fangs, and claws. She had also requested that Naruto eat or absorb any unknown plant he finds (They had already absorbed dozens of the common ones by now) as well as new animals, to help her in her research.

Hearing what she was attempting to do, he had been ecstatic, sending random clones to gather new materials to be absorbed in the morning each day. As they were still fixing his body they hadn't started weapons practice with his new bone tools yet, but he was almost bouncily eager to learn.

Anyway, she could now make his hands into claws or whatever easily, but she wanted something more. It took a week and a half to slowly develop what she was calling the Biomass Weapon package. Most of it wasn't ready for use yet, nor were they tested, but Vixen felt that real progress had been made.

At this point she could quickly modify Naruto's limbs, turning one into a sharp blade with twitch muscles that could slice SO fast it was near invisible. Very fast, very accurate, but she wanted the blades of bone to be more compressed, with a higher metal content (which was not really an option right now, as the normal human body had trace amounts of metal.)

Defense had gone better. It took much longer to activate that state, to transform his body, but the prototype defense build had huge cords of muscles and heavily redundant bone structure in the chest and arms. Bone plates like armor covered in horns, claws, and teeth covered his front and arms, allowing close range shredding and wide area coverage from arrows, kunai, and other long range weapons. Vixen had been trying to come up with a combination of bone, tooth, and claw to make something sharp, hard, and new for defense... but it had been slow going.

The design of her 'Whip fist' weapon had gone... badly. Initially it utilized a system similar to a frogs tongue (Too weak, easily cut, torn, or ripped) to hurl a blade long distance. The explosive gas attempt (Custom chemicals generated from his body combined to explode) caused internal burns, part of Naruto's wrist to blow out, and the fist went like two feet before falling to the dirt.

She frowned. Naruto hadn't been mean about that attempt, but the giggles had been annoying (After he stopped grumbling about the pain.) Vixen needed some sort of force generation that wasn't muscle (Torn in the frog tongue method), gas, or liquid... or at least, one that didn't fail so badly. An exploding arm is only cool if it wasn't YOUR exploding arm.

Still, a giant harpoon of bone and muscle sounded awesome enough that neither she nor Naruto had given up on its design.

In apology to her favorite boy, she had designed something he called "SMASHER" or "HAMMER FIST!" which was basically just really big heavy muscled bone at the end of his arms, so he had a huge hammer-like tool. It could knock down trees just by smashing the ground alone, and the boy had FAR too much fun testing it.

All these changes had really defined her personal ability to modify Naruto's body, and she began changing his default one to include these more impressive (if not naturally occurring) materials. Stronger bones with carefully constructed fat deposits for cushioning and vibration dispersal, designed with crumple areas for easy future healing. Additional flexibility for the smallest bones, and other bone modifications based on what she analyzed from Naruto's spars with Gai-sensei. Each change trying to find the best physical setup for Naruto's style.

Full nights of cuddling, fun experimentation with her new consciousness and his body (Nothing naughty yet, sadly), and enough materials to truly begin building up a significant storage of Biomass? Life was awesome.

Feeling what time it was, she blinked Naruto's eyes and reformed him into what she now considered his 'base' state. Slightly taller than before his incident (Thankfully his full growth spurt hadn't happened back when Kurama was in charge), significantly stronger muscles and bones, a larger (And slower breathing) heart, a few strong but thin bone plates just under the skin, almost like chain mail in shape that covered various pressure points and weaknesses in his body.

She internally blinked, and had her body inside the seal tap Naruto's relaxed forehead. "Naruto, did I already tell you that I have been changing your body recently?"

Bright blue eyes blearily opened. "Hmm? No, I don't think so. More healing?"

Vixen shook her head while stroking his hair. "No, not all of it. You know I've been doing stuff while you were training with that bushy eyebrow man with green clothing, right?"

He looked more awake. "Gai-sensei? Yeah, I thought you were teasing me while I was training."

She shook her head. "No, I've been trying to improve your body to handle that training better, to make you stronger."

Naruto finally sat up and settled, giving her a look that surprised her with how much trust was in his eyes. "Well, like what?"

He missed her quick blush. "The basics were probably obvious. I watched where the training was damaging your body and experimented with making those areas stronger or more limber, thicker or thinner. Your body is now pretty much optimized for your fighting style, although I am still messing with it."

She continued after his nod, although his grateful expression made her feel warm inside. "It also resulted in you having a larger and slower heart, larger lungs, and me basically removing your stomach and intestines. At the point the food would have reached your stomach, you just absorb it like you do with your arm tentacles. I just make you feel full when you eat roughly as much as you used to in the past."

She blinked as the boy suddenly had a HUGE smile. "Are you saying... that I could eat ramen forever without getting full?"

Vixen chuckled. "Well you could, but that would get expensive. I CAN however save the memories of the best bowls of ramen you eat, let you rank them here in your mind, and recreate those memories here to enjoy them forever WITHOUT making yourself sick or poor." She smirked at the overjoyed child. "Of course, you will have to eat all kinds of different ramen and topping combinations to make your mental copies more lifelike... but that won't be an issue, will it?"

He exploded into an awesome pose. "This world shall find a wandering hermit, dedicated to truth, justice, and the search for the finest of all Ramen!" Naruto blinked. "Uh... After the Hokage thing. Wow, that whole 'Dedicate your life to Ramen' concept could really tempt a guy."

She laughed before they both settled a bit. "Well, ramen devotion aside, after I got your body to a certain point I thought about how I launched that bone spike into that ninja that tried to kill us. Our body is able to use Biomass to create all kinds of chemicals and poisons and organic materials... like your clothing." The wink left the boy red faced and shuffling on the seat slightly.

Naruto looked down, playing with his outfit. "Is that why my outfits had bone buttons and zippers and stuff?"

Vixen waved a hand. "I tried coating it with a thin layer of metal instead of just dense bone, using the vitamins to help. We may have to find someone with a bloodline that can break down raw metal first before we can make normal buckles and stuff out of it."

She leaned forward. "You know I multitask really well, like you and your shadow clones really. So aside from the testing we do together, I also take control of your body while you sleep and do experiments with our stuff then. I've been doing advanced testing to create new body forms for you, or weapons or whatever." Vixen grinned as Naruto went from shocked, to thoughtful, to REALLY eager.

He nearly bounced off the couch. "Tell me about what weapons you came up with, Dattabayo! What kind? How many?"

Her smile was softer than expected. "Well I've made a breakthrough on the bone weapon thing we were working with. They are much denser, but by shaping the insides like a honeycomb, with lots of gaps, I found out we can fill them with cleansed Bijuu Chakra. That gives them the weight and density you expect from normal kunai or whatever, and you SHOULD be able to make them like that nearly automatically based on how I inserted the information into your memories."

Naruto almost instantly felt a bone shifting in his palm, and growing into the sharp knife. "Hmm." He frowned. "Well we can't use this for now at least. Too recognizable, even if you don't feel anything fox-like. What happens if it pierces someone?"

She frowned. "Best use it on enemies only. Flesh will melt off the target, possibly explode their chakra coils as well depending on where they were hit and how fast they removed it. Still, a nice long range damage dealer. It will also damage any weapons it smacks into, even if it doesn't have a sharpened nature like wind to cut through them. Bijuu chakra is rough stuff even after we purified it."

He hummed. This had been a problem for a while, really. Normal bone shaped like knives were naturally porous and light (No blood or whatever like a freshly harvest one), so they were rough to throw and made little impact. They had learned how to heavily compress the bone knife and build it in layers, and while it was still a bit too light and had a rough time piercing, it did tend to explode into sharp bone shrapnel, which made it great for unarmored opponents and animals. Unless they had chakra reinforced skin... sigh.

The heavily compressed bone also took MUCH longer to generate. Regular bone was near instant, this new honeycomb knife was even faster although apparently he could charge it up with Bijuu chakra over time for a huge boom.

Compressed bone took like 8 seconds. That was fine for something like a sword or ax or something, but taking 8 seconds for a single use disposable throwing weapon? That was just silly useless.

It was on the list of things to train up, just near the bottom of the list. As others could recognize Bijuu chakra, even if it looked strange (Purified Bijuu chakra from the Kyuubi was golden for some reason), he would have to use it as a last resort option as well, at least until his status had been leaked or exposed.

Vixen drew his attention away from the new knife he had generated, glowing gold. "Make sure you get a lot of milk for calcium if you use the bone trick a lot." She moved on. "The second big thing are body changes. Your body by default is built to be fast, accurate, and able to dodge. The alternate one is massively powerful, good reflexes, but much slower in comparison. You know your Hammer Fist, right?"

Naruto grinned and gave a sharp nod. She tapped his nose and he felt his body changing (Even though it was still in his mind.) His chest snapped apart and started bulking up almost like a balloon, cords of muscle and bone building and layering, his arms dislocating as the sheer mass forced his body into a huge mass of bone and steel muscle, now over eight foot tall. His shoulders were as wide as he had been tall!

As he nearly fell over from his new body shape, his left hand and arm bulged and began sprouting teeth and sharp white points from the front as it swell into a large shield, what could have been a hammer fist had flattened so his wrist was connected to a huge circle of bone, tooth, and even a ring of flexible claws on the outside.

Oh, and he had an extra elbow now. And his joints were... strange. He could now move the shield four or five feet in any direction, any orientation, and his massive arm seemed to easily lock together to hold it against future attacks.

Vixen slid a finger against his other arm, which seemed to sort of...implode. Like all he had was a single blade near his elbow, a short one at that that seemed wicked sharp. "I'm still working on this, but basically this body is built to defend your future friends, family and team mates."

She smiled at his touched expression and waved a hand. "Your body like this has almost everything duplicated, extra lungs and heart, and a lot of chakra reinforced flesh, skin and bone for defense. Your shield is the most durable thing I could imagine, and the front parts will actually explode forward when hit to damage someone trying to smash you and reduce the power of piercing attacks or thrown weapons. It regenerates quickly of course, and there is a very strong layer in the back as a last resort, but if you use this form too much you could run low on Biomass to heal yourself. That's why I want your main weapon in this form to be the whip fist."

Her hand was light on his other elbow. "If you are protecting, you probably can't dodge or move much without putting them in danger. I'm still building this weapon, but you should be able to launch either bone spears or this blade, which is connected like a whip. The spears or blade can be poisoned too, with either chakra suppression, sleep, confusion, or dissolving substances." She looked up at him. "Those were in the goo injected in you. Eat or absorb more poisons and plants and I will try to improve your options."

Naruto grimaced. "Can't say I love the idea of dissolving someone or causing instant death, but making people unable to use ninja attacks or fall asleep could be really useful." His frown got deeper as he considered that crazy Anbu. "And I... I suppose a fast painless death would be better than letting some insane man blow up part of the village. I really don't like the idea of going to poisons right off the bat though. Not the lethal ones."

Vixen nodded. "I'll focus on ones that cause lethargy, sleep, loss of chakra control, and temporary sense disruption." Seeing Naruto's blank face she giggled. "Unless you ask for a change, your projected spikes will try to make an opponent not be able to see, hear, smell, feel, or chakra sense for about eight to ten minutes. If they have no poison resistance, then they will also feel very sleepy and unwilling to do much."

His smile came back. "Heh, honestly sounds like a prank Dattabayo. I can live with that, as long as it's not a long term thing. And I will get samples of other stuff for your to play with, ok?"

She squeezed him into a tingly hug. "Thanks, Naru-kun. I'll make sure any spikes you shoot when training will not be poisoned unless you say otherwise while I work on these."

She sighed. "Now for the rough part. Consumption techniques. With a lot of practice, you will be able to touch someone anywhere and my virus will be able to infiltrate them, copy their mind completely, and return to you for us to examine at our leisure. But that will take practice. And... until I gain that level of precision, most of my consumption techniques involve literally absorbing the person."

Naruto paled slightly before nodding. "Enemies only then. Bad enemies at that."

Vixen waved a hand. "Full consumption means I can scan them for any and all bloodlines, even if they are recessive or only partially activated. I will get a full copy of their mind, as well as the body reflexes they used to activate them. And we get Biomass." She leaned forward. "We can also get good info working with a dead body, depending on how recently it died. People's minds require blood and oxygen, but they don't instantly decay just cause someone cut off their head or whatever. Heck, the Yamanaka can gain at least something from a head that has been sealed for two weeks."

Naruto groaned. "So I should consume enemies that died in battle?"

She nodded. "If you need a body for a bounty, I can consume and replace the brain with an exact duplicate, even if said duplicate will be our cells which would then commit suicide. Just wait ten minutes after we do that so that our virus can destroy itself, and it will be as if we never did anything to it."

He gave a weak nod. "Any other benefits?"

She held up a hand and began to count. "Aside from gaining a lifetime of secrets, training, and knowledge, the Biomass would heal most if not all your wounds instantly, if you don't consume the metal in their clothing you can recreate their form and outfit and utilize their stored mind to BE them, act exactly like that person, and infiltrate nearly anywhere."

Her hand absently began tracing the massive cords of muscle his mutated body had as he flexed the massive bone and muscled shield. "It would be amazing for anything involving infiltration as it takes only a second or two to happen, and their body will be stunned from our virus during that whole time. So great for assassination, rescue, anything where that person won't matter later on. And I mentioned the whole 'Lifetime of learning' thing right?"

Naruto absently raised his right arm, seeing somehow from his altered right eye something odd. Had it grown wider? He clearly could focus almost like zooming in with binoculars with it, and there was a bright dot that showed where his bone cannon was aimed.

He aimed at a tree. "Can I make these arrows honeycombed? Like the Bijuu knives?"

Vixen paused, eyes seeing things he couldn't. "Hmm... yes. You lose about thirty feet in range though, cause your regular arrows are compressed and spiraled shaped for accuracy. At least the heads are. The target you see is calculated using your senses automatically, adjusting for wind and gravity and all that, which is why the dot doesn't stay still when your arm does."

Naruto absently flexed his right arm, left shield almost unconsciously covering his body and creating a stabilizing platform for his new launcher.

The white streak went THROUGH the tree. That was like... a bazillion times better than the knife tests. He glanced at her.

Vixen shrugged. "I haven't got the launching system for your main blade yet, but from the many failures I did manage to REALLY spin those arrows before they are launched. It's basically a very sharp, very quickly spinning drill."

Naruto nodded, had a huge grin on his face, and fired as fast as he could. Within moments the distant target had... a LOT of bones in it.

Vixen grinned at his stupefied expression. "Part of building that cannon was the ammo. Your wrist has 16 bones, your hand 38. That's 54 arrows that get generated for your arm cannon initially, and they can fire VERY quickly... but it takes like 8 seconds per bone to replace them after." She tapped his arm, which rapidly shifted into a long bone sword, connected at the elbow. "This is the reserve blade, to defend yourself as your arrows regrow. You will be stuck with it until you regrow enough to make an arm again... unless you want to just dump some Biomass on it, which would speed it up by a whole lot."

He frowned for a moment, then sighed. "If I can't handle a threat with over 50 poisoned piercing arrows, there would be no point in firing more anyway. The recharge is fine. I would rather save the Biomass for regrowing the shield from damage as fast as possible instead."

She nodded. "My thoughts too. Anyway, about the consumption stuff, I'll store any minds, bloodlines, or whatever you absorb to be used whenever or however you want. Eventually you will be able to consume someone by touch... even if you use the whip fist or the ground spikes."

His head snapped up. "Ground spikes?!"

She sighed. "You would slam your fist in the ground, send Biomass out, and create a field of spikes that would consume any non-ally they touch. Any ally would be healed of some of their wounds instead." She shook her head at the pleading expression on the boy's face. "No, it doesn't work yet. It would take far more Biomass than you have right now, and even then I am working the bugs out of it. You would need much more experience in consumption AND using my viruses to heal... which I'm note entirely sure works right now anyway. If you tried to heal someone, I might eat them by mistake."

He slouched. "So... more training?"

She sighed. "Yeah. Much more training."

His body seemed to crumple in on itself as he reformed into his normal, bright golden haired and gorgeous blue-eyed self. And was sucked back into a hug on the couch. She sighed. "Anyway, I wanted to tell you all this stuff later, but it's almost time to go to your team assignment. I just wanted to tell you that even though you have no stomach, organs, inner-ear, spleen, nose-hairs... and so forth, that I knew about it and it was fine. Also, don't freak out if parts of you feel a bit strange since I added bone and muscle here and there to cover weaknesses, like chakra points and all that."

The boy hesitantly hugged her back, not seeing her smile brighten. "Thank you, Vixen. You've done so much for me, and... well, I really appreciate it."

She lightly kissed his forehead. "Just remember that when you hit puberty, foxes can have several vixens, so go find me some adorable sister wives for me to tease you about."

He jerked like he was slapped. "WHAT?!"

Vixen cooed. "Aww, look at how adorable your red face is."

Naruto tried to get off the couch as she dragged him back on. "Get off me you perverted fox!"

She grinned. "NEVER! Kawai for the win!"

And then poked him on the forehead.

He woke up.

Apparently, while she was controlling his body, she had gotten him dressed, sat him at his breakfast table with what appeared to be freshly heated instant ramen, and his clock was next to him letting him know that it was time to get ready for class.

Oh, and his face was ten million degrees and in danger of exploding out of embarrassment.

After calming down a bit he gave a rough chuckle. He still wasn't sure if she was serious or not with that last bit, but it had been a good prank really. He froze. She was going to give him hell once he actually hit puberty.

He dug into the warm meal, honestly feeling a bit touched that she had gone through this effort. No one else ever had. Perverted or not, she was becoming a very close friend.


	3. A Me in Team

By the time Naruto got to class, he could feel that something was going on. Not many noticed him of course, as he was currently 'wearing' a mostly black outfit with orange highlights that fit for once, making his muscles pretty obvious.

All the same, the halls were full of students gossiping instead of waiting in their classes. He relaxed and wove through the children, his attitude allowing him to slip through the crowd and into Iruka-sensei's classroom. Naruto sat near the back, relaxing his body into his arms as he slid into the desk.

Normally he would have been with the others, yelling and trying to find out exactly what was going on in the school. But aside from the normal reactions that would cause, he had already gathered a fairly good idea from overhearing the gossiping future ninjas on the way in.

By decree from the Hokage and due to recent discovered favoritism, all students would retake their graduation tests. Any who recently passed would either pass again, or if they had issues with the new and more strict test standard, they would be put on probation for three months and tested again. That should give them time to bring themselves back up to standard.

An untrained civilian would have found such a short window to be useless when it came to upgrading skills to shinobi levels, but chakra made all the difference. Sure it caused puberty to hit harder and earlier (Sorry Sasuke-teme), but it also encouraged and retained muscle growth, it accelerated healing, and it enhanced fitness in general and prevented injuries.

A student could gain years of results from just weeks of dedicated training, which made many of the failures in Naruto's class especially silly and avoidable, considering how low standards apparently were. True it would take years of chakra use before they could really enhance their muscles and bones to the fullest safely, unlike Naruto who had just been built from the ground up, but there was a reason that little bushy-brows Lee who was 'Unable to use Chakra' could walk around with tons of weight on his arms and legs and survive.

Naruto grimaced as one of the girls he had tried to 'date' shoved her way into the room. Sakura really was pretty cute, right up until she opened her mouth or smashed someone with her fist. He watched her fight another girl, Ino, as they battled their way to sit next to the super-emo boy, Sasuke.

It was really a tradition at this point, minus the screaming proud blond trickster that would normally stand up to proclaim the lameness of Uchihas everywhere. The more he thought about how he acted under those seals, the more embarrassing it was.

Well, he didn't need to fight for some loud girl's affection any longer. He had a new friend who liked him, and she was a billion times nicer and better looking and stuff. And she could do awesome goo things too.

Naruto reveled in the warm hug that Vixen sent him, both of them ignoring the slowly filling classroom. For ninjas, the children still hadn't picked up the importance of 'studying your environment', especially in a 'safe' place like their school, so most of the kids ignored or failed to notice the strange kid in black in the back.

A cute white-eyed girl, Hinata Hyuga, nearly tripped over herself. Naruto-kun was still here! AND he had a headband! Her whole body suddenly filled with a warm sparkly feeling. Ever since she had seen the boy fail despite all his determination and hard work, her world had felt colder and gray.

And not only was her favorite classmate here, but he was sitting next to her usual spot! She fought down her blushes as she sat next to the boy. "G-Good morning, Uzumaki-san!" Damn, she still stuttered. AND she was quiet a stupid mouse. Hopefully he would look over that.

Naruto jerked out of the short mental conversation and turned to the girl. Oh right, this was Hinata, that sickly girl who always... blushed... uh.

He ignored Vixen's giggling as she forced memories of the white-eyed child through his mind. Sickly? No, those were blushes. In fact, he noticed that in ALL his memories, she had been smiling at him or trying to share her lunch (At least until bullies had started destroying both their meals, and Naruto told her it was ok not to share.)

The boy gave an awkward smile. "Good morning, Hinata-chan. You can call me Naruto, you know? I've never had a chance to learn all the formal stuff." DANG why had he said that?! Change topic. "So did you hear what the hubbub in the halls were about?" Stay cool, if she liked you back when you were a mental moron, she should be FINE with you now!

Her blush spread but she seemed to find some sort of inner strength. "Hai, N-Naruto-kun. They said that we would be retested today, that there had been some sort of issues with the grades."

Naruto felt some of the pressure lift and gave a more normal smile. "Yeah, I know that Mizuki-sensei turned out to be a traitor. I managed to get my headband by turning him in when he tried to trick me. Turns out that several teachers were being less than fair in grading us."

Hinata blinked. "Really? How did you capture a Chunin?"

He grinned. "Aside from being awesome?" Her giggles were cute, really. "He had give me a fake mission to get the Forbidden Scroll from the Old Man and learn something from it. Turns out that having stupidly high chakra levels can be a plus with some of the more dangerous techniques, and I learned one heck of a skill."

Her stunned look caused him to grin. "How? I mean, how did you... That sounds nearly impossible! That's amazing Naruto-kun!" She blinked, blushed at his grin, but managed to give one back. "What technique did you learn?"

Naruto shrugged. "A cloning technique, one that has a massive cost to cast but that has equally awesome effects." He held up some fingers and counted off. "First of all, the clones get a chunk of chakra and all my current knowledge." He grinned at the girl. "That means that they have better control than me too, since they have lower chakra levels. Secondly, they are solid until they get a significant impact or wound, so they can do stuff for me like gather resources, set up traps, do chores, or just help out in a fight."

He leaned back in his chair, enjoying a chat with a possible friend (Well, a human one anyway) for the first time in years. "Anything they learn gets processed and shared with all the existing clones and me." His eyes narrowed. "I think there may be some sort of small mental connection going on as well. I can't give mental orders or anything, but when I tell some guys to do something, only the ones I was thinking of actually do it."

He waved a hand. "Basically if I ask for 10 helpers out of 100, there is no hesitation or pausing, the 10 I expected stand up. That can't be usual, you know? If I asked for 10 helpers out of the class, there would be all kinds of discussion or debate, even if we were all the same person."

Naruto leaned in, Hinata enthralled at the idea. "They do tasks that I wouldn't want to do, with a positive attitude. Even suicidal commands like replacing me if I am in a dangerous position that WILL get them popped. It's like doing my wishes make them happy or something. Heck, when I created some clones back when I felt a bit lonely, they actually did a bit of a slap-stick routine and made me feel better."

The girl blinked, in thought. "So you could use them for spying or such? Maybe scouting? I'm probably going to be on a scouting team if only for my eyes alone." She saw his confusion and waved a hand at her face. "My blood-line lets me see really far away in all directions, even through stuff. It takes a lot of training to pay attention to multiple things at once though, otherwise it's like having a really nice picture that is too big to see easily."

Naruto hmmed. "I bet if you learn the technique, you could designate sectors for each clone to watch to reduce your concentration load. They'd pop when they found something." He frowned. "But you probably wouldn't have enough chakra. Even Hokage-jiji can only make like 3 clones properly and safely. Most Jonins can't handle more than one. It's why the skill was on the forbidden scroll to begin with."

Hinata's eyes were huge. "B-But Naruto, didn't you say you could make 100 of them?"

He grinned. "Well, normally I can make much more than that..." His grin fell. "But I am currently using up most of my chakra due to some changes I went through a month ago. Classified stuff, but until I finish building up my full reserves, I can only make 20 clones max right now." He missed her expression and sighed. "I know investing this much energy for the future will be very helpful, but it is taking forever."

She hesitantly tapped his shoulder. "Changes?"

His face went thoughtful. "Well..." Quickly glancing around he gave her a foxy grin, sending her insides for a loop. "I can't TELL you, but if you were to happen to look through me with those eyes of yours..." The grin turned into a smirk. "No peeping below the belt of course!"

That did it. Hinata went full red and started tapping her fingers together, certain non-G rated thoughts circling her mind. "H-Hai Naruto-kun. And I won't tell anyone else." He watched her eyes strain and veins bulge as power pulsed in her sight. Oh... her eyes got kind of sparkly when she did that. Neat.

And she stared.

After a moment (And certainly NOT a quick glance in a certain impressive direction), she murmured. "Hokage-sama knows about this?"

He nodded, and shivered slightly as her eyes raked his body again. Vixen was doing that stupid wolf whistle.

She paused near his chest. "Is this the end of the changes, or are they ongoing?"

He tilted his head. "Not just ongoing, but changed by design. I can revert at any point, but right now we are testing different body setups for power and stuff."

Her eyebrow jumped. "We?"

Naruto grimaced and double checked that they were being ignored. "THAT one requires privacy to tell, and honestly it's an S class secret, if not greater." He frowned, grumbling. "Mind you, anyone who isn't me and shares it will be executed apparently. Not that it matters much since almost all the adults in the village know something about it..." He sighed.

Looking at Hinata, he gave it some thought. Here was a girl who had supported him even when he didn't know it, who cared about his goals and supported them, who put herself in the path of bullies to try and befriend him.

Giving a nod, he leaned in. "As much as I can't let this get around, it bothers me that some asshole in the village knows a lot about this and the one girl who acted like my friend doesn't. If we can get somewhere private, I'll fill you in then, alright?"

Her face could have burnt toast. "A-A-Alright, N-Naruto-kun."

Grinning, he leaned back. "Let's just go with the general cover story. A new friend of mine helped fix me after an assassination attempt went... really really well for me honestly. I'd say my life improved like 800% after that damn Anbu tried to kill me." Seeing her horrified expression he quickly put his hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, unlike the other attempts this one really did go great for me. Possibly the best thing that had happened in my life. You'll like her too, if you get to talk to her a bit, I'm sure of it."

Hinata's eyes were straining again, and he could almost feel her searching him for injuries. "But... well, you are feeling ok, right Naruto-kun?"

Naruto gave a big nod, smiling. "I am fine, Databayo. Better than that, honestly. Like a man who just escaped the desert and found ramen." He grinned at her weak giggle. "So I hate to admit it, but I only recently noticed how much you have been kind to me recently. Could you tell me about yourself?"

Over the next half hour or so the two children talked back and forth. Occasionally Hinata would scan his body, watching the strange insides shift even as her eyes traced his bizarre internal curves and twists. Somehow they were quite... beautiful. Like curled smoke, or fine art. And if she happened to glance at his newly defined and refined muscles, who can say? Vixen kept examining Naruto's memories of his classmates, finding Hinata to be one of the gems in this particular mud ball. She also kept making awkward comments about how squeezable Hinata looked, and other such 'She is just so cute!' comments.

Unfortunately life intruded, as a visiting Anbu and Iruka-sensei arrived and began passing out both pamphlets explaining what was going on and written tests. Eventually everyone settled down and focused. Well, except for some of the male students... the Anbu was wearing exposing armor after all and seemed to enjoy flaunting it.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto grinned. For some reason, that test was VASTLY easier than the old ones! Hours of careful study by dozens of clones had turned out to be mostly pointless, even if he COULD now answer some of those damn questions from past tests. Heck, it made the previous times he took this test look insane by comparison. For the first time in his life, Naruto had been one of the first ones to finish. Also for the first time, Sakura and Sasuke were NOT in the first few. They honestly seemed stunned about something on their papers.

He had checked it twice before turning it in though. That one test that suddenly changed form after having chakra run through it had really made him paranoid about these things.

Now they were outside, getting ready for testing their physical skills. Unlike the last few tests, this time they were actually testing running speed, jumping height, accuracy while running, and a dodge course where Anbu would throw small balls and slowly increase in number.

Last time it was just an accuracy test, with shuriken and kunai.

And this time, Naruto flat out dominated. Years of having faulty equipment had forced him to adapt and learn to throw from nearly any grip or position and stay roughly on target. With his accelerated mind and enhanced body, and his new balanced equipment (Going to stores transformed for the win!) it had damn near been instinctual. Heck, he didn't NEED the auto-targeting feature Vixen could turn on in his eye, not from this short distance away. His speed made dodging effortless, although he almost dodged SO soon that they could re-aim. But he caught that and adjusted.

There were many open mouths and surprised faces when he finished the circuit. It was Hinata's eyes though that made him feel like this was all worth the hassle. They practically shimmered.

The other girls would have likely said something about Sasuke-teme's less than expected scores, but many had collapsed to the grass from exhaustion at this point. Even Hinata was a bit short of breath. They had to actually delay the spars due to how worn out most of the students were, something that made the Anbu and several witnesses frown.

Naruto and Hinata sat under a tree together, her father's unreasonable exercise plan having kept her active and Naruto's new body not even noticing the stress.

As the girls had been hit harder from the unexpected exercises, the boy's spars got going first. Not that Naruto cared really, he was enjoying sitting next to the slightly worn girl who had smiles in her white eyes.

Eventually he got called up, apparently facing Kiba Inuzaka, one of the clan heirs according to Hinata. Smug with his canine companion, Akamaru, Naruto had never really gotten along with the boy. Some kind of 'Alpha' thing maybe.

The feral child grinned. "At least I got an easy fight after all that exercise! Come on Akamaru, let's take this wimp down!"

Naruto ignored the few tired cheers the boy got as he moved into position, the blue-eyed blond instead took a stance that seemed to confuse the canine-like child for a moment before he pulled back both hands and smacked his fists together. "YEAH, we are going to tear you up! (Arf!)"

Iruka-sensei gave a sigh. "Kiba, you are not allowed to use any technique or chakra enhancement during this spar. And you WILL stop when I tell you to this time, I will not be having another child injured during a spar if I can help it." He glanced at Naruto. "Same rules for you, Naruto. This is a taijitsu spar only."

His feral grin seemed very confident. "No problem Sensei! We've got this in the bag!"

The fanged child waited until just as the battle commenced, and lept into battle, his hands curled into claws as he dashed forward.

At the last moment, Naruto reached out with his right hand, grabbed the incoming wrist, and tossed the boy over his shoulder. A loud snapping crunch occurred as Kiba hit the ground hard and at a bad angle, his bruised wrist hitting the ground in just the wrong way.

Naruto blinked at his stunned classmates. "What?"

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto grumbled, Hinata giggling at his expression as he mumbled, waiting for their turn to show their techniques. Apparently some of the students had claimed that it had been a rigged fight and convinced one of the Chunin teachers to get in the ring with Naruto.

Everyone went quiet again after Naruto tossed HIM out of the ring.

None of them hit like Gai-sensei. All those hours fighting a man who represented speed, power, and raw experience... these kids couldn't even hold a candle to that.

For the first time, Naruto actually felt disappointed. He had wanted to show off his speed, his new reflexes, how hard he had been training, and especially his awesome new fighting style!

And then he got a mutt who ran in swinging and a Chunin that clearly needed to retrain to his prime.

Hinata actually managed to squeeze his shoulder. "Don't worry, Naruto-kun. It was still quite impressive."

He tried not to whine. "But Hinata-chan, I didn't even get to punch someone! I feel cheated."

They were interrupted as Hinata went to the front, did the three technique's as requested, and returned. Naruto blinked. "Hey, why didn't you do an extra ability for credit?"

She blinked before sighing. "My father... no, my clan does not look favorably on anyone who trains in abilities beyond our fighting style. We have to be up close and hit all the chakra nodes, and be refined and calm while doing so."

Naruto frowned. "But you said you can see really far away... Why let anyone get that close? Just throw a knife, get a bow, or learn some sort of long range technique." He glanced down at his body. "Or heck, learn that healing stuff. I gave up because I had WAY too much chakra, and they told me I need perfect control for that stuff. You could actually SEE the problems in your patients."

Hinata gave a weak smile before holding up her hand, giving a light green glow. "Don't tell my family, but I AM learning how to heal. It seems too useful to not know, but I would be punished heavily if they found out. I plan to blame the abilities on my new teacher, say that he or she forced me to once my team gets set up."

He grinned at her, one hand reaching out to almost touch the glow. "That is SO awesome. I don't need it due to how amazing I am, but I bet you could help LOTS of people one day!"

They were interrupted again as Naruto was called to the front.

Iruka-sensei gave him a conspiratorial grin. Their respect for each other had gone through the roof after the man had basically took a blade to the back to protect the boy. "Naruto, please show off the replacement technique."

And the boy was gone. Wait, there was a chair there now... the change had been so subtle that neither the teacher NOR the Anbu had caught it. Iruka turned with a big grin and saw his student behind their seats with a similar smile. "Well done indeed Naruto! I see you have been practicing a whole lot. Swap back and show me the transformation illusion technique."

Naruto replaced himself with the chair but frowned. "Sensei, if I learned something stronger than that one, I can do it instead, right?"

The teacher blinked. "Uh... Sure?"

With a puff of smoke, Naruto vanished and was replaced with... "Good job Naruto, it looks just like me! But how is it different."

Naruto-Iruka grinned and held out his hand. "I'm not using illusion, but pure transformation." His smile got larger the more gobsmacked the teacher looked. "Don't spread it around though. If I didn't trust Snake over there, I wouldn't have shared this with you two, especially not in class."

The Anbu with bright purple hair jerked. "What do you mean, you trust me?"

He grinned at her. "You stopped a guy in the mob from cutting my eye out when I was younger. It's why I never targeted you and a few others when I pranked the Anbu."

Turning from her shocked body language, he grinned. "And this last one should probably be kept secret, but lots of people know already and it is going to be a major part of my fighting style." He held his arms out with a grin. "Shadow Clone Technique."

Dozens of black cloaked ninjas appeared on the walls, ceiling, and the lower level, stunning the quietly talking class and causing Hinata to nearly pass out as her eyes eagerly activated to examine the eye candy.

Iruka-sensei sighed with a smile. "Well done, Naruto. And yes, completing... five... ten... twenty clones has achieved the require three needed." He chuckled. "No extra credit for creating them in Henged outfits, good job though."

The room vibrated slightly as the black ninjas all called out "HAI SENSEI!" and then vanished into small clouds of smoke.

Sure he had learned how to do this smokeless... But it looked AWESOME with smoke clouds! He was even working on changing the cloud color, making them really chakra expensive smoke bombs.

Iruka teased the boy by pretending to be deaf for a moment. "Any extra techniques you want to show off for extra credit? I can't really count the Chara control stuff with the wall walking, even though I was very impressed."

Naruto sighed and slumped. "No techniques really, I have been focusing on my blood-line these last few months." Hokage-jiji had pointed out that Naruto DID technically have at least one blood-line now, just one that couldn't be passed on easily since it required Vixen-chan to operate.

The Teacher, Anbu Snake, and the first row or two of students were all caught off guard with that. Iruka leaned forward. "Bloodline? Should you show it here?"

He nodded. "The Old Man said that since I activated it recently I should let my possible team-mates get used to it as well. A general overview of it has been released by the office today as required, so I won't be breaking any rules."

Snake chuckled. "Well let's see it kid. Kami knows it was hard enough keeping up with you before unlocking whatever you got."

Naruto grinned before taking a pose with his arms carefully held off both sides. "We are calling it the Biomass Bloodline, and it is basically extreme body modification like the Akimichi clan, but to a different degree."

He took a deep breath... and swung both arms, which had almost instantly twisted into a sword and shield. His right arm ended at the elbow, turning into a long thin bone blade with a black mass along the back, his skeletal hand visible but fused to the middle of the sharp weapon.

His left arm was much thicker and shorter now, a circular plate a little more than half his height, with serrated teeth spikes along the edges and outside, a strange mix of shield and sharp edges. His arm had also become thicker, and seemed to have developed an additional joint or elbow, allowing a much wider range of motion.

When Naruto heard one of the civilian girls faint, his face was smiling so hard it looked very fox like.

Before he realized it, he felt Snake slide behind him, tracing his arms down to the deadly weapon with her finger and breathing FAR too interestingly into his ear. "Oh my, Naruto. I see you've got something interesting down there."

His eye twitched, and he dashed to the side. Even though this defensive form was slower than his norm, in short jumps his agility was beyond impressive to both adults watching. He sighed. "Why are all the pretty women I meet perverts? I mean really."

Hinata tried not to blush but didn't look away. His changed arms were interesting, but his suddenly increased muscle mass and still lean body was far more so.

Snake chuckled as she leaned forward... a bit too much. "Now now, Naruto. You can't just show off your impressive tools without getting a little personal attention."

Iruka quickly cleared his throat, stepping between them, and made frantic hand gestures. "Well done Naruto. You can take your seat. Now. Go. Quickly."

Ah, the many uses for the replacement technique. His hands and shoulders reverted to base form as he reached Hinata who was not really meeting his eyes. He sighed... maybe he should have expected this. "Don't worry Hinata, I know it may look a bit gross when I change..."

She shook her head. "No, it's not gross. I've been training to be a medic after all, and desensitization was a big part of that." Her hand reached out to gently touch his arm, causing goosebumps to shiver down his spine. "It was just... really really interesting. Could you show me more later?"

Naruto glanced back towards the Anbu who looked grumpy that Iruka-sensei had saved the day. "Sure... but nowhere near that snake lady. Deal?"

Hinata giggled. "Deal."

Nothing really interesting happened for the rest of class, although a few of the others did some neat extra credit technique's too, like the guy with bugs in him, some sort of shadow manipulation, fireballs or whatever. Naruto and Hinata pretty much ignored them all.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

The Hokage relaxed behind his desk, watching Naruto's class through one of the more valuable artifacts of his office, a sphere that used complex sealing arrays to view individuals or places within the village. The prospective team leads had also been enjoying the show, at least until they all realized exactly how little physical conditioning most of the new students had.

The old man puffed a nice smoke ring before focusing. "Any requests this year? Understand, more than a few of your possible students will need to hit very specific mile markers in their training within just three months." He lent forward. "This means that all of you MUST accept the possible teams, to get them up to standard. I will NOT have these children punished for the sins of their teachers."

There was quite a bit of grumbling, even from his son, Asuma. Apparently he had been planning on snatching a tried and true combination of Ino/Shika/Cho, the mind walking girl, the shadow binding puppeteer, and the body expanding tank. Which would have been fine really if his son had actually planned on teaching them rather than rely on their clan techniques to keep them alive.

He had been more than a bit disappointed by his team leads. Kurenai, the illusionist, seemed focused on little Hinata alone. Kakashi was stuck on Sasuke, since once Sasuke awakened his blood line they would both share the Sharingan, or copy-wheel eye. Yet until they had seen in person how advanced little Naruto was now, no one had even glanced his way. Did no one understand that appearances could be very deceiving? They were ninjas! HIS ninjas!

Perhaps sensing his darkening mood, several of the Jonins quickly made requests for various students, although many avoided the clan heirs and Naruto. The prestige of having a clan heir was offset by their probable attitudes... and apparently even showing how advanced he was, Naruto was suffering from prejudice again.

His temper hit a boil when Kakashi rolled up with a smile. "I request Sasuke Uchiha, as we share an eye condition." Oh he did not just wink. "I wouldn't mind either Ino or Sakura, they could probably make decent medics and they would work well with Sasuke. Oh, and Naruto Uzumaki."

Ignoring his son trying to claim Ino for his planned dream team, the old man settled. "And why young Naruto?"

The one-eye Jonin shrugged. "He seems to have a rivalry with Sasuke, which should help him stay motivated and hopefully unlock his eye powers sooner."

A random background Jonin smirked. "And the team could use a meat shield if nothing else."

A hand sign later and the man vanished, grabbed by Anbu. A heavy weight smothered the office as the Hokage rose to his feet, pipe clenched in his teeth. "Anyone else plan on using a young boy as dead meat for their team? Or as a disposable tool to enhance the rest?"

It was surprisingly quiet for a bit.

Eventually Kurenai raised her hand. "I was planning on setting up a tracking team with Hinata, Shino, and Kiba. Hinata could search for targets, Shino has his internal insects for analyzing smells and following targets, and Kiba had a bit of brute force and animal senses... but as he seems more hot-headed than I expected, Naruto could be a good replacement. I was unaware that he... no, that ANYONE could use Shadow Clones like that. Those were Shadow Clones, right?"

The old leader gave a small smirk as the other Jonin's jerked in shock, not having realized that the many clones in that room HADN'T been illusion. "You are correct, Kurenai. Naruto has also recently gained some substantial new abilities, not the least of which is a bloodline that would allow you to gain information even if the target commits suicide. Ask him for details later, he has been authorized to tell those he trusts."

In the end, Kakashi was given Kiba due to the boys lower marks thanks to tradition, the lowest and highest two being teamed together (A high test score couldn't repair years of grading sabotage). It was close, but Asuma did end up with his trio... and harsher requirements for them to pass as well (To his disappointment.) And Kurenai got Hinata, Shino, and a bunch of questions for a foxy student.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Naruto was vibrating with energy as he led Hinata to one of his favorite training grounds. He had a friend! And she was interested in the stuff Vixen had set him up with!

He ignored the virus's giggles as he nearly skipped to the training area. Ninjas could skip if they wanted. Unexpected and all that stuff.

The boy may have been on a bit of a high since realizing that the pretty girl talking to him in class HADN'T freaked out when his body did the whole turn-into-ooze-into-weapon thing. Though apparently another friend of hers was the quiet guy Shino Aburame, the one whose body is an actual hive for insects.

Compared to that, having a sword arm seemed almost normal. Especially since he could undo it with no issue.

Hinata followed him into his training area and seemed a bit overwhelmed when twenty Naruto clones split off and walked towards the stream nearby. "S-So you've been training in water walking?"

Naruto had cleared an area that he normally used for his fighting stances to get a bit of elbow room. "After I mastered tree walking, I got to the point where I can literally sleep upside-down on a branch. I want to get to that same level with water walking."

He turned and gave her a big grin. "Now the form I showed in class was only a partial transformation, it's not really finished yet but we've made some great progress on it. So don't be too harsh criticizing it yet, ok? This is like WAY before battle ready."

She turned away from the multiple slightly wet muscular Naruto clones with a bit of a blush. "Hai, may I use my bloodline to view the changes?"

Naruto nodded. "Anytime Hinata, it's fine." He flexed sharply, then leaned forward. "This form when fully activated has a tough time talking, so let me know when to change back. It is meant to be very damage resistant even if a bit slow, and to block damage away from team members or clients."

And he exploded.

Within moments black ooze surged up and out, quickly forming a rough black mass with a huge blob of twisting teeth and bone for a left hand while the right seemed to spiral in on itself and seep into its own elbow. Rapidly color returned.

The beast was damn near 4 meters tall and 2 meters wide, a wall of muscle easily twice Hinata's height. The skin now looked like black stone instead of wet tar, with thousands of white bone plates covering the huge chest.

It's left hand was a massive shield with a spiral of teeth, of black claws, and another of gray horns, a spiral that started almost flat in the middle of the shield and with each spiral grew into sharp warnings at the rim of the huge, circular shield.

The right hand was just gone. The elbow now looked hollow and filled with sharp white twisty points, a deadly bone blade protruding from the center.

And it had no head.

Naruto's chest now had what almost seemed to be a bright blue stone necklace. Eyes that twisted and turned, focused without eye lids. The eyes looked like a string of beads due to the size of the monster, and looped from the right to the left side of his shoulders like a necklace.

It seemed to have no mouth, to not breath at all, until her vision showed the tiny flaps on the creatures back, each filtering the air farthest away from whatever Naruto was fighting.

At first she thought it had no feet, but its legs were now thick, armored trunks that made the entire creature almost look like a solid tombstone holding a shield.

And like roots from a rose, blood red pulsing veins spread from the eyes and down the body, almost as if it were being held together by those eyes that were looking everywhere.

Hinata felt more than a bit shocked that the entire process had fascinated her. It was like some inner part of her friend had escaped a prison, she could almost FEEL the joy radiating from those beautiful blue eyes, all of them looking around as if for the first time.

She gently touched the outside of the hollow arm, feeling his warm heat. "C-Can you move like that? Did it hurt?"

The eyes sparkling with mirth told her she was worried about nothing.

Several minutes later, the boy reformed, and they began talking about his abilities in more depth. After discovering that Naruto could obtain bloodlines from devouring an opponent, something he had expected a large negative reaction about really, she had paused.

Looking at her hand, she tilted her head. "Naruto-kun, do you have to eat a whole person or just get a small bit? What if you took some of my hair or blood?"

He blinked before hearing Vixen whisper. "Well, if I don't consume the brain then I won't get things like memories, automatic control of the new body, or whatever. I would be like a newborn baby with a grown body basically... but I have some help with that."

Naruto sighed, and motioned her to sit near him by a tree. "Remember that big secret I was talking about? Look around for me. If no one is near, then I will give the basic overview of the situation."

Her eyes sparkled and seemed to flex slightly. "One civilian 300 feet away, other than that there are a few animals. They seem to just be creatures though, not anyone transformed."

He grinned before sobering. "Yeah, well... good." Naruto sighed. "Alright, I guess we should just get this out of the way. What do you know about the day I was born? October 10th, I mean."

She frowned. "You mean besides the Kyuubi attack?"

A weak smile caught her off guard. "Yeah, that. Turns out, the Bijuu are just lots of intelligent energy. Can't destroy them easily. So the Forth Hokage had to seal it away." He looked over at his clones, working away on the water. "Couldn't use an object, it would shatter from the power. Heck, couldn't use most children for the same reason. It would have to be a child that would have large Chakra reserves already, that would be most likely to adapt to such a huge power source."

Her confusion suddenly vanished half way through his words. He nodded. "Uzumaki's always had large Chakra reserves. Healthy too, we tend to live longer than most clans or civilians."

He continued, ignoring her expression. It was easier to talk while watching the water. "Life got... a bit rough for me after that. Turns out that most of the attacks, poisonings, and all that stuff was due to this one Anbu guy, the one I mentioned before who tried to off me."

Naruto jerked slightly, feeling her wrap him in a hug, bringing a small smile to his face. "In a way, I am very grateful to him, you know? His final attempt to kill me was to get a whole bunch of dangerous stuff, mix it together, and inject me with it. I think he planned on blowing up the rest after, but he didn't get that far."

Hearing her gasp made him feel a bit warm inside. Vixen just thought the pair were precious. "Anyway, the Kyuubi tried to help the stuff along, apparently he had been trying to kill me from birth but the Hokage had put in all kinds of safety stuff in his seal to protect me. At the last moment, I knocked myself out, modified his cage to let the goo into it, and hoped for the best."

His smile was soft. "The virus ended up consuming the Bijuu entirely, and became alive, a person. She had the memories of the fox and all previous human containers that once locked him up, and she decided to help me."

Hinata gave a watery smile at that, still holding tight.

He grinned. "So yeah, if I just got a bit of a person like hair or blood, I could with her help recreate his or her body. She would also help recreate basic things, like how to breathe or walk and all that. Would still act like me of course, without getting their mind and stuff."

They sat for a bit before the girl held up a hand. "So... if you took some blood, could you make eyes like mine?"

Naruto felt touched, but gently put her hand down. "Maybe, I guess. And someday we might do something like that... but I would rather not give people ammunition to attack either of us. For now, I'll only gather bloodlines or skills from enemies of the village. But... thank you Hinata."

Their conversation lasted longer than it probably should have, but he got to walk a pretty girl home. Some things were worth missing some training time for.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Vixen and Naruto had a late night, debating on what policies they should have when working in or out of the village, even if that seemed less than likely for a while.

While charging the various seals with power was a non-issue within the village, it would be too dangerous to dedicate such a large chunk of his power when in enemy territory. Instead his cells would only absorb the ambient chakra most living beings released naturally, what would normally be detected as his 'Chakra Signature'.

Aside from avoiding waste, it would also make him feel like a civilian to low level sensors. Maybe even trick a Jonin or two if they were not focusing on him. True, it was nothing compared to the progress he had made when focusing the majority of his power into storage, but needs had to be handled.

The forms ready for use had to be trained as well. Sure he could just accept damage and then ignore it, consuming any foe... but Naruto refused to accept mediocre results, especially not now that he was making real progress as a bad-ass ninja!

They also hashed out when and who to consume, and for what reasons. Survival was high on that list, only exceptions being if the action would endanger his few friends or loved ones. Vixen had also mentioned some bloodlines she really wanted to get her hands on.

Obviously she focused on lines that worked with biology. From the Fox's memories, many abilities were focused on having special eyes (And being able to grow as many as he wanted... well, wasn't that convenient!) Yet aside from those, like Hinata's, she wanted ones more useful.

There was a clan Naruto had never heard of called the Rinha clan, who seemed to have a similar ability to him, as they could simply absorb chakra from a target and gain their appearance and memories. It would let him copy team-mates without consuming their brain (And wouldn't that be nice?)

Another one was going to be... unlikely to be found. The Kaguya clan was supposedly near extinction back when the fox had heard of it, much less now. But they had extreme control over their own bones, able to create new ones or weapons out of bone, and harden them to diamond-like levels.

All other bloodlines were really just rumors or myths, at least the ones Vixen was interested in were. There was an eye blood line called Kerryugan, which would allow one to control the iron in blood... but no one knew which clan carried it. Oh there were rumors of course, from the Gavranare clan to the Chinoike clan, but rumors were all she could find. The only reason the fox bothered to learn THAT much was because it was supposedly able to cast illusions like the Sharingan.

Of course, with so little fact it may just make your eyes red. Obviously it hadn't taken off or became as famous as the other bloodlines.

Everything else was just going to be taken if available kind of thing, unless an opportunity came up. Naruto honestly felt that bloodlines were a tool, not the be all and end all of being a ninja.

Anyway, Vixen had a small list of ones to listen for, as well as a general order to keep alert for any that allowed body modification. It was an easy item to agree on, so they moved on to the more... controversial topics.

Vixen had noticed that Naruto had at one point removed his shirt while working out. The shirt that was made of his own LIVING tissue.

Apparently when he wasn't paying attention, his clothing (body parts) had no problem being separated. They were still connected via chakra to Vixen, they could still absorb oxygen and other needs. And when he put it back on, it had no issue reconnecting.

Further, it didn't seem to have a max range since he had sealed his chakra into the cells. That power would prevent them from changing or mutating, preventing some sort of viral mutation or outbreak. It would ensure that the virus left behind was still his, was still under his control.

And strangely, the grim reapers seal had no issue being connected to two separate places at the same time... or even more than two. Why not? It was made by the concept of Death itself after all.

Thus Naruto had an option no one else had before.

He could make a backup.

After talking back and forth (And as it was nearing daybreak anyway), They decided this was a good way of storing the extra mass he was building up. If he had unsealed all the Biomass stored in his cells, he would weigh several tons by now simply due to the massive amount he consumed and his lack of creating waste.

After all, he didn't eat by normal chemical means. His body converted matter into raw material and stored it until needed. No need for the restroom and all that.

So he still had the matter from that ramen three weeks ago, processed, refined, and stored.

And finally, he had a use for all that mass.

Before heading to the Academy he had retreated to one of his safety holes, one that had saved his life back when he was eight years old and had been chased by a mob.

By the time he reached class, Vixen had modified the massive blob left behind and had converted it into a strange worm like shape with a sharp mouth, one that began to consume soil slowly as it dug deeper into the earth. She had already designed a mostly normal looking tree like structure that would eventually grow from the spot, that used the biology she studied from Naruto's experiments to actually convert sunlight and water from the worm (once it reached the water table) to create even more mass.

It had made Naruto feel a bit strange, like an arm he couldn't see digging into a beach. He was of course still connected to the mass as it slowly grew into something like a... nest? More like a hive really. It was constantly shifting as Vixen experimented, trying to optimize the mass generation and water collection.

He shivered as he felt a worm get consumed, then shivered again as Vixen quickly used information from that worm to make the mass dig faster with less energy required. It wasn't a bad feeling, but very odd.

Seeing Hinata, he gave her a wave that she tentatively returned as he headed to her.

At least they would have team placement over with after today. He hoped for the best.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

Iruka worked his way down the list, hearing Kiba groan at being stuck with the 'Emo-bitch' Sasuke, and trying to ignore the chaos the comment had caused. Just a few more minutes and they were all someone else's problem.

He loved teaching, but no one had control of children when they knew they were about to graduate.

Still, he sighed as the shouting just got to a new level. A quick hand sign and an illusion made his head massive. "SIT DOWN AND SHUT IT!"

His glare could melt stone.

Quiet? Damn right it was quiet. "Moving on, Team 8 will consist of Shino Aburame, Hinata Hyuga, and Naruto Uzu-"

"WAHOO! Take that Sasuke-teme, I get the cool team-mates!"

Iruka felt his eyebrow twitch at the havoc once again running in the class. "If you would like to live long enough to make it to lunch, I would heavily suggest everyone SIT DOWN AND LISTEN!"

Finally, some quiet. "Anyway, Team 8 will be led by Kurenai Yuhi, please follow her."

An attractive, red-eyed woman stood forth from the other Jonin at the front, apparently amused at Naruto's declaration and how Hinata had at some point zoned out in her chair. "Alright kids, follow me to Training Ground 8, I'm sure you've had enough class today."

A 'Yatta!' and from somewhere a 'Troublesome' later, and team 8 moved through the crowds toward the training areas.

Naruto had quickly introduced himself to Shino with Hinata still slightly dazed and smiling.

The boy was... uh. Serious. Calm. It honestly felt strange to the boy, who had so much energy that he even relaxed hard core. Still, Shino didn't seem stuck up like Sasuke, just... laid back. Like the world was willing to just wait until later.

It wasn't bad really, and he answered any questions asked in a slightly slow, but polite manner. Of course, each answer was a bit... odd.

"I am a husk, one that contains my hives and kikaichu. Why? Because we grow and evolve together to make ourselves stronger."

"I enjoy breeding new mutations of insects. Why? Because they may gain advanced abilities or refine existing techniques and make us stronger."

"I think we are near the training grounds. Why? Because Kurenai-sensei is slowing and there is a clearing ahead."

Strange, but not bad. Naruto nudged Hinata since they seemed to have arrived (Thanks Shino) and she was still a bit... loopy. Cute though.

They all gathered and sat on a larger stone near the edge of the training ground and got comfortable, before Kurenai gave them a warm smile. "All right, we are now team 8, a tracking team. As Iruka-san mentioned in class, I am Kurenai Yuhi, feel free to call me Kurenai-sensei. So, how about some introductions?"

Seeing the three children were agreeable she smiled. "Alright, I'll go first. Kurenai Yuhi, I focus on using illusion techniques primarily although I am one of the more qualified taijitsu users in the village. I am a sensor and plan to have us as both an information gathering team and personnel tracking team. My likes include evening drinks, octopus with wasabi, and reading. I dislike cake, sometimes my friend Asuma, and people who insult the ability of illusions on the battle field."

She smiled at the three. "I actually have a strange elemental type, the mental one, Yin actually. It is partly why I have had such success focusing on illusion. My dream is to one day create an inescapable illusion." Turning she pointed at Shino on the left. "Your turn, Shino."

The boy was mostly covered up, but he still pushed his blacked sun glasses further up. "Shino Aburame. I utilize my hives primarily in combat, although I have a little training in using some basic earth techniques. Why? Earth is mainly defensive in nature, and allows me to control the shape of the battlefield."

He adjusted his shades. "I like insects in general, the study of natural poisons and nature itself, as well as wild grass salads and winter melon. I dislike barbecue or other strong smelling foods. Why? I prefer a mostly vegetarian diet out of respect of the majority of my hives. Should I move toward more carnivorous nests, this may change. My family had my affinity tested, and I had strong earth affinity and low fire affinity. My dream is to find a brand new species of insect."

Kurenai was surprised, most families didn't bother testing their children's affinity until their Jonin teachers brought it up. It might be clan related. She turned to dear Hinata and gave a warm smile. "And you Hinata-chan?"

The girl seemed to snap back into focus from whatever warm happy place she had been floating for the last few minutes. Blushing, she gave a short bow even though they were seated. "Hinata Hyuga. I use my clan techniques for short range disabling or damaging of foes."

She seemed too distracted still to notice that she wasn't stuttering. "Our clan doesn't test for affinities at all, and discourage training in any techniques or tools other than our bloodlines. I have been secretly training in medical techniques, and hoped to hide our training from my family if possible."

After a deep breath, she gave a small smile. "I like Na... my friends." Well, she was focused now, and her face was bright red. After a small cough she continued. "I... I press flowers, enjoy cinnamon rolls and red bean soup. I dislike crab and shrimp, as well as certain judgmental people. My dream is to one day free my family from the caged bird seal."

Kurenai winced hearing that last one. Clan politics, NO thank you. "And you sunshine?"

Naruto gave her a huge smile. "YOSH! Naruto Uzumaki, accept no substitutes!" He raised his hands behind his head and looked up. "My fighting style has really changed recently after the last assassination attempt failed, so now I am a mostly close range melee fighter."

Absently he waved a hand, twenty clones appearing behind him in formation. "That said, I mostly plan to use clone tactics, for training, fighting, everything. I have ridiculous levels of chakra, not counting my special situation."

Glancing at Shino he sighed. "You should know Shino that I have two S-ranked secrets, maybe higher, that only I am permitted to share without consequence. Our sensei probably knows already and I confessed to Hinata yesterday, but if we are going to be a team we should cover it."

Turning to Hinata, he gave a questioning look. After seeing her eyes flash and then give a nod that the cost was clear, he sighed.

Smacking his stomach, missing Kurenai's stunned expression at how straight forward he was being. "When the nine tailed fox attacked, they needed a strong vessel. Couldn't use inanimate objects, the fox is the strongest Bijuu after all, and couldn't use most children, the raw power would have killed them."

He sighed. "My clan apparently is naturally stronger thanks to a bloodline giving higher levels of chakra and longer lifespans. So I got the fox sealed inside."

Shino looked stunned.

Naruto gave a rueful grin. "It gets worse. The fox apparently had been sealed before, so he was uh... pissed basically when he got stuck in me. Spent most of my life trying to get me killed."

Settling back on the rock he continued. "On the last attempt at assassination the Fox tried to help out the gunk killing me, and accidentally got eaten himself. The goo gained a mind after eating intellectual raw power, and she has been helping me ever sense."

Waving his right arm into a long, sharp bone blade, he grinned at the shocked teachers expression. "The new S-ranked secret is that my body got remade, and I can continue to change it however we wish. I rarely need sleep, I don't really get tired, and I can consume others to gain their powers, their memories, and their bloodlines. And yes, I already told the old man about this."

Seeing everyone but Hinata gapping at him in shock, he blinked. "Uh... so. I guess I should talk about how much I like ramen now?"

Needless to say, there was going to be an adjustment period with his new team, based on how a couple of them have zoned out.


	4. Bridging the Gap

Naruto frowned as he stared at his 'backup' plant. His dead plant. His literally 'stone' dead plant.

Both he and Vixen had been a bit shocked to realize that his 'plant' backups were accidentally collecting and storing natural energy, or nature energy. The same energy that his father, the fourth Hokage, had been training with in an attempt to become a 'Toad Sage'.

His mother's memories revealed that Naruto's father had a really hard time with the meditation required. A person had to become one with nature... almost zero conscious movement was basically step one. The man died sealing the fox before making any major breakthrough, and never even reached the limited success that his teacher Jiraiya the Toad Sage had reached.

The plant showed the result one got when they failed: You turned to stone.

That set both Naruto and Vixen off researching, and after they had spent a week or so talking about and reviewing the relevant memories, and they had realized several things about natural energy and sage mode in general.

First, natural energy was... lazy. Lethargic. Static. It hated to move, it resisted change. By staying still, natural energy forced itself into your body because it had BEEN there before you moved it out of the way. After absorbing enough of it, it tried to make YOU stay still by turning you to stone, the most stable and natural container of natural energy.

Once you started moving, you were on a timer because the energy would try to stay behind and would slowly drain away.

This power wasn't naturally toad-like as suggested by some, but people like Naruto's father or his father's teacher had trained in  
the Sage Arts on Toad Mountain. Due to the energy being very lazy after a point some of it would simply stay with the user after long  
periods of training, which was why those who practiced on the mountain took on toad-like traits. The lazily absorbed energy would  
taint any new natural energy absorbed for the rest of that ninja's career.

Why then did it turn people into toad statues? It didn't. But most trainees on Toad Mountain were... well, toads to begin with. Of course  
most failures were toad statues.

Thus if Naruto tried and failed (Like his backup plant had by accident), he only had to worry about becoming a Naruto rock.

The second thing the two testers had learned, was why sage mode gave such an energy boost to the user.

To prevent turning into stone, one had to run chakra around and through the natural energy. As it passed it created something like friction, and if the ratio of chakra to nature energy was just right then a huge spike of power occurred.

This friction generated far MORE energy than either components alone, and the absorbed natural energy never got used up. It was close to eternal, and would eventually escape the grasp of the sage user and return to nature.

Hence Naruto's current experimentation.

There were multiple backup plants at this point, side by side. It only took a few trials to determine how to prevent any natural energy being absorbed through microscopic movements. This allowed the plants to create a replacement body for Naruto with no issue, and he had already tested and verified that he could 'respawn' at those points. His left behind body would either dissolve or dig down and become a new plant backup for him to return to later.

That success motivated them to try and achieve Sage Mode, at least with the plant backups if not himself. After a few dozen more tests and much lost biomass, Vixen had determined how to replicate Sage mode itself safely (If not quickly) in the plants with carefully created temporary chakra coils, even though it took four hours of being stationary to set it up. That was still a success even if his father was able to achieve the same results in only 20 minutes. Heck, Jiraiya could do it in 3 minutes. Still, Sage mode was Sage mode, so they both marked it as a 'win'.

Thus reducing the time required was on the agenda, and would mostly likely require refining the ratio of chakra to natural energy as well as the rate of transfer through said energy. However, the larger issue was that there was a time limit.

The collected energy would eventually escape his grasp and like all other Sage users, he would have to stay still and vulnerable before continuing the fight.

So off and on for the last few weeks Vixen was attempting to seal natural energy directly into his cells rather than just existing alongside them. Since it never got used up in the process, this should theoretically allow infinite Sage mode since the power wouldn't escape from his body.

It didn't go well. Sealing the energy into the cells ended up causing instant stone particles.

He knelt next to the most recent test plant (Stone now). Due to his new team and their D class missions, Naruto hadn't had the time he wanted  
to really focus on these experiments.

His hand caressed a sculpted leaf. "So what have you tried so far?"

Vixen pouted in his head. "Direct storage causes stone-death, so I've been using binary transfer seals. Instead of storing energy in one place, there is a set of three paired cells constantly shifting the power from one to another. This slows down stone-death, even more so if I have another set of transfer seal pairs moving a combination of Bijuu and Human chakra next to them."

She sighed. "Still it all eventually turns into stone. Changing the ratio of Bijuu and Human energy helped a bit, but the long term issue remains. And if you destroyed or damaged one of the three cells in their paired loop, it creates a cascading failure. Stone within moments."

Naruto watched the leaf break off in his hand. "Well that sounds like an issue."

Vixen nodded. "Tried storing regular chakra with the natural stuff, but it requited a very delicate ratio that seems to fluctuate and it only delayed the stoning again, probably because the natural energy was too stationary once sealed."

She sighed. "Second method has had better results, but I need your help with it. I want something similar to the Yin-Yang setup the Bijuu core uses, with one side being composed of natural energy and other side cycling either your chakra or a combination of Bijuu and human chakra."

The boy hummed. "What about only using the Nine-Tailed energy?"

Vixen shook her head. "Using only Bijuu chakra is bad, the fox once tried to become a sage before he was sealed and based on the Fox's memories, trying to go Sage mode almost always ended in explosions. He had to reform a body."

Seamlessly the boy released the plant, sat down, and dropped into his mindscape outside Vixen's cage. The bars were gone now, simply a sheet of glass with a large list of changeable options... the original seal was barely a memory anymore thanks to all the changes the two had accomplished over the last few weeks. If it wasn't for some of the more fiddly bits of the overly complicated creation, Naruto would have likely helped Vixen escape the whole thing by now... if it wouldn't cause his body to go nuts.

Moving to the side cages he glanced in. The first contained the Nine Tails chakra generator, which had resisted any attempts of duplication or modification. Stable and with output being heavily filtered then stored, it now stood separate from the main cage/seal for safety reasons.

The second cage strangely enough contained the most powerful design for chakra generating coils the boy and fox could come up with, as they had decided to remove most of his chakra network. His body now generated the sections needed automatically as he attempted to use each technique, and stored power directly into his cell seals any other time. By only unlocking a certain number of seals per ability, his control vastly improved even with his current reserves.

The last cage was the empty one, one he had planned on putting the most efficient and controlled design possible for chakra coils, one he could use with medical and illusion techniques. After stumbling on his 'generate coils as required' system however, the cage had remained empty as the super efficient design wasn't truely needed. At least the space would be useful now.

The cage was only about 10 meters cubed, but the glass front flowed over his skin like water as he walked into it. Even as the cage resealed behind him both of Naruto's hands began scripting in the room.

A base chakra coil that generated some energy, shove the output into a set of simultaneous spirals directly above like a disc. Create a pair of curved seals, transfer paired seals, ones that would shove natural chakra back and forth between the two. Add an emergency dump if it tried to turn him to stone.

His hands paused, before moving again like a dance. Not just an emergency dump, make it directed, compressed. A short range beam of natural energy basically, to force OTHER people to either adapt or become a decoration.

Naruto frowned. Now it would be too easy to run out of nature energy by accident, even if this engine worked. The paired transfer seals were also a weakness, and if one ruptured the other would fail as well. A stone generator helped no one.

Turning to the side, a separate section of the wall moved closet as he rapidly created and modified the transfer seal. Maybe if he could decouple the partners... no, that would just create a feedback loop, killing everyone no doubt.

In the end, he modified the seal to connect to groups instead of just individual targets. First there was a single 'Gather' transfer seal, which all his 'Backup Plants' would use to share collected energy between them. Areas with rich energy available could move their burden to other areas with low natural energy.

Next, a 'Bounce' transfer that would store energy internally until either there was a detected instability (Due to too much buildup or almost turning to stone for staying too long) and then bounce it to all other bounce seals for them to handle.

Finally, an 'Overflow' transfer seal that could be disabled, one that could drain the Gather or Bounce seal excess if they got to dangerous levels. It could be focused like a beam for damage or radiated as a field to encourage life in the area.

Vixen just watched in awe as the child modified master level seals on the fly and began refining them to be more efficient, smaller in size, and more robust with fail safes. She had known he would make progress once he had time to come inside the seal and focus, but even as the boy lost track of time and his project gained more and more complexity, she was astounded.

She was also hesitant to stop his progress, as he seemed to be making huge strides in design.

Naruto had a grin as he continued to work. Absently he passed designs to Vixen to replace all the collection cell seals in his backup plants with gather seals, while he continued modified the bounce ones.

Since the bounce seals were much safer to work with than the original transfer pair ones, the newly designed spiral above the chakra coil was now MUCH denser, with thousands of spirals alternating between chakra paths and bounce natural energy paths.

By default it should automatically generate the most optimal ratio between the two energies as any imbalance would activate the bouncing seal removing found issues instantaneously.

Quickly connecting the chakra paths back into the original coil, he attached overflow seals to a series of cells near his hands. Another overflow was set deep underground, surrounded by his own Biomass and set to generate a gentle field of power where his oldest and most extensive backup plant could take advantage of it.

Cautiously watching the energy as the single chakra coil began infusing the spiral with power, Naruto allowed the bounce seals to begin accepting energy from the gather seals. Each hand was hovering over different sections of line work, ready to tear and destroy sections of his own art if it seemed unable to handle the new power strain.

Vixen watched as after hours of work Naruto stood with back straight and hands demanding obedience, seals swirling below and around him as vivid colors swirled through his work.

After an initial flicker of dim gray, rich blue, and a few sparks of light yellow, the entire seal began to glow golden.

It WASN'T human chakra. Not anymore.

Somehow, thanks to a constantly changing and very precise ratio of natural energy, human chakra, and Bijuu chakra that Naruto had subconsciously used when modifying this subsection of the Grim Reaper Seal, this new combination of energy was very different from the expected spike of power planned for.

It was thick, almost as thick as unprocessed Bijuu power. Probably due to how concentrated it was. It was slow and powerful, trading quick actions for unquestioned and unrestricted dominance.

And it apparently could be sealed like regular chakra, although very little was able to be contained per cell. VERY little. And it was generating at a very slow rate.

But not slow enough.

With a yelp, he jerked backwards out of the cage as everything within began heating up to a massive degree. Almost imminently Naruto slapped a bounce seal on the whole cage, forcing any and all energy generated from within out of his system to corresponding bounce seals stored in all of his backup plants. His hands seemed to smoke from generated heat while the glass surface of the cage slowly began to cool down thanks to the energy being more safely distributed.

Vixen whistled. "That... that was interesting. Much richer than the so called 'Sage Mode' that either your father or his teacher used, by far. Probably because your newly created seal has not only greater reaction time to fluctuations in power but because your plant backups never stop supplying more natural energy for the process."

Naruto shook his head. "That ISN'T the energy used for sage mode. I think only a tiny amount of that is normally generated within a sage, and it enhances all normal energy available to the user. Since they will have been balancing their chakra and natural energy at the time, THIS stuff would cause both of those to boost massively in power."

Vixen carefully tapped part of the wall, infecting the cage and watching as the virus quickly began gathering statistics about the new process. "I've already started breaking down all the test plants that turned to stone, and I have begun examining the cells that got closest to conversion without actually changing material."

Naruto nodded, barely able to limp into her cage and relax on her couch. "I assume to duplicate them and use them to store this new energy?"

Vixen absently rubbed his back as she grew a beautiful fox tail that kept tapping changes on her screens. "Yep, going to call it Sage Energy for now even if it seems to have picked up trace amounts of Bijuu power and possibly something from being in the Death Reaper's Seal. Until we design better seals, it would be best to store that stuff in our backup plants to prevent any danger to our current body."

He grumbled as her fingers worked out some sore spots on his spine. "I have enough issue trying to use YOUR power correctly, forget super-gold-power or whatever we call it. Will it let us build up biomass though? I think that is what I'm feeling."

She nodded. "Not only does releasing natural energy allow our plant roots to grow faster and create mass, but I've been sensing my cells mutate and begin to determine signals in the power. It's still a task in progress, but soon each backup plant will be able to sense enemies, animals, wanderers... all kinds of stuff for miles. Like a weakened version of Sage Mode sensing that your father talked about to your mother."

Naruto groaned as she worked on his upper shoulder. "What do you think the gold stuff will do to it? Raw sage energy seems to boost any energy it merges with."

She shrugged. "We'll test later. Despite the complicated method used to generate it, once the energy is formed it can be sealed safely like regular chakra so far, even if I had to store small amounts for stability. I actually modified the inside of the cage into a thick layer of gathering seals, both to reduce the strain of your bounce seal outside the cage and to help distribute the new power into the backup plants."

Naruto chuckled. "So ignoring the super-sage-chakra, not only will I be able to regenerate a body when needed with our plants, but I'll be getting something like sensor abilities to boot? Probably should tell the old man about that."

Vixen absently nodded as she manually manipulated some experimental body parts to begin growing deep underground, really embedded in the soil itself. "It could defiantly help protect the village at the very least. Possibly whole countries one day, depending on how advanced these become. You could also abandon your body, make one up here at a backup, and be able to report to the Hokage during an important mission. Or we could design a creature or plant that could change color to show messages... maybe."

The golden-haired boy absently followed her actions mentally, watching as she absorbed all the testing plants into one central 'Tree', one that looked nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the clearing. Underground however, the main root went deep. Much deeper than his other backups, this one was rapidly mutating to become his main Biomass storage plant.

He sighed and relaxed into her hands as she rubbed his spine. "I wish we had more time to design stuff but we don't. It took me a couple of days to convince Sensei to let me skip practice and a D-rank mission to get today's work done. Maybe after our first C rank, something more complicated than 'Walk my dog' or 'Find my cat'. Man I hate C-rank missions."

Vixen winced, Naruto's mom's memories of those cat missions flashing through her mind. That creature should probably be eaten at some point.

Without witnesses of course. At this point, Naruto might not even complain about the idea.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~  
Hinata was the first of team 8 to see Naruto and gave a shy wave. Shino and Kurenai worked their way toward the two through the crowds behind her. "N-Naruto! How did your experiment go?"

The boy bounced up to her. Thankfully his new looks hadn't circulated through the village yet, and most of the civilians couldn't recognize the tall muscular boy in dark green and black clothing or associate him with the scrawny orange prankster king. "Hey Hinata! Yo Shino! Good Morning Kurenai-sensei!"

His teacher looked on with amusement. "Good afternoon Naruto. You missed a wonderful 'Weed the garden' D-rank today."

He gave a deadpan stare. "Ack. My heart. For I have lost much and gained little. Oh woe is I."

Hinata giggled before bumping his arm. "S-So, your experiment?"

Naruto gave a huge grin. "Mostly a success! Can't go into details here in public, but let's just say I have a green thumb." Seeing her glance at his hand he rolled his eyes. "Figuratively, I have a green thumb. Are you about to go see the old man?"

Kurenai sighed. "You should refer to the Hokage with more respect, Naruto. But yes, we are."

He waved a hand. "The Old man and I are practically family, getting a nick-name from me IS a sign of respect. But yeah, I need to let him know about the advancements I've made recently and the ones I provided to our team."

She glanced down at the 'glove' on her left hand and nodded. "I've given an update or two between missions but it is probably a good idea to give a full overview once in a while."

Shino nodded. "Indeed, the advancements you have given my hive is much appreciated. Why? Because it both protects my original insect swarms and enhances my effectiveness in battle."

Hinata just followed the rest as they turned in their latest D-Rank mission scroll and had their payment scheduled. Having worked closest with Naruto, she felt she had benefited the most as well. Her 'Headband' felt like a warm hug all the time.

Naruto threw open the door to the Hokage's Office.

Everyone froze as the door just kept going, smashing into the opposite wall.

Four Anbu agents, weapons drawn, and one surprised leader of a major village of ninjas, stared at the 'Most Unpredictable Ninja'.

He stared back. "That... was AWESOME!"

The Third Hokage chuckled. "Hello Naruto-kun, I see you haven't slacked in your training at least."

The boy walked in, waving to the confused protection detail. "Yeah, sorry about that. Since I won't lose muscle strength unless I choose to, Gai-Sensei had me stop using weights and resistance seals. We're focusing on fighting styles for my new body designs instead, but I have to get used to how much easier everything is now."

The old man made some hand gestures, and one of the Anbu vanished to handle replacement of the door. "So how was the D Rank today? Astoundingly amazing I presume?"

Hinata giggled as Naruto gave a flat look. Their team had seen the two interact for a few weeks now, and all of them felt much less tense in the old man's presence. "Ha Ha. I do laugh." The boy suddenly smirked. "But no, I got to skip today's mission to handle something I have been experimenting with and got some real results."

The Hokage looked interested. "On what level? Is it related to the items Kurenai-san has been reporting?"

Naruto shook his head with a grin. "This might be A or even S-rank. I don't mind my team knowing, but we should probably lock down again."

Several Anbu groaned. This kid had done this twice before and it was STILL annoying. Still, the Hokage gave the code so they all pulled out as the room was sealed.

The Third Hokage took a deep draw on his pipe, leaning back in his chair. His paper-work free desk always helped him find some inner-calm these days. "Naruto Uzumaki, Report."

Naruto stood straight. "Advancements have been made for the Blacklight Bloodline, ones that significantly change use in both communication and detection. As previously reported, I can disconnect portions of my body to then transform into permanent and non-viral forms of organic material, as well as some creatures. I can also disconnect portions of my body, give said portions a set of instructions, and allow them to operate independently while retaining the ability to control them from a distance if required by an emergency, clothing for example."

The old man nodded, and Naruto grinned, holding out a hand... with a small rose growing out of what appeared to be soil. "I have been experimenting with disguising my Biomass as a plant life-form, for the purpose of generating more Biomass through photosynthesis."

Everyone gaped at the very convincing flower.., even more so when it suddenly turned it's bloom to Hinata and gave a bow.

The Hokage put down his pipe and stood, went around the table, and began utilizing several analysis techniques as his hand glowed. "Astonishing... and this is not a wood technique? This is just your Biomass alone?"

Naruto nodded. "Instead of storing ALL my biomass inside me in seals, I've only kept about three times my body weight. The rest I have been storing in a few plants hidden around the village for testing purposes." The plant suddenly shifted... into a very tiny, child-like copy of Naruto. "I call them plant backups, and my Grim Reaper seal has no problem moving with whichever body I move my consciousness to."

The old man was already up to speed about Team 8 being informed by Naruto about his burdens, in fact he supported it after a serious discussion with the team, so he focused on the technique for now. "What advantages do you gain with these backups?"

The boy grinned as he let Hinata get a better view of the 'mini-him'. "Well if I was hard to kill before, it's downright near impossible now. As long as SOMEWHERE has enough mass to be my body, I can control even the smallest amount elsewhere to consume more material to recover my form."

He animated the tiny body to dramatically collapse in his hand, grasping at the sky before 'I die!'. "I can either turn my abandoned body into a new plant, have it dissolve, or I can have it do a suicidal attack. Haven't made any of those yet, but it is an option. As my memories are distributed through my Reaper seal, all my Biomass constantly get updates from my memory."

The tiny Naruto jumped up. "So basically, you would have to kill all my Biomass at all locations and in all forms simultaneously or I can just recover."

He grinned at the shocked look on the others faces. "Now, part TWO of my surprise is why I wanted to talk today. How much do you know about Natural Energy, old man?"

The God of Shinobi chuckled. "More than a little." He blinked. "Why?"

Naruto grinned. "Turns out that my plants have to be stationary most of the time and are by their very existence 'one with nature'. I was absorbing natural energy by ACCIDENT while testing this, which kept turning my plants into stone."

The old man hummed, while Kurenai-sensei was still recovering from the 'I'm basically immortal' issue. "So you found a way to block it out I assume?"

The blue-eyed boy chuckled. "Well yes, at first. Then I did some advance seal work and learned how to safely harvest and store natural energy for me to work with. It was mostly thanks to memories the Fox used to have that Vixen helped me with, but I not only managed to replicate the experience of Sage Mode, but I accidentally took it a step farther."

His miniature 'me' reformed into a representation of his new 'Sage Core'. "I used the 9 Tailed Beast chakra core as a reference, and built this. I also had to create three new types of transfer node seals and convert them to being formidable from chakra utilized in the Reaper seal itself."

Everyone was focused on the glowing power in the boys hand. Light green nature energy swirled with grey chakra in a disk, with a floating cloud of golden... something.

Naruto pointed at the cloud. "The grey stuff is my chakra of course, which does nothing but generate itself and go into a loop. Any excess is stored away for later use. The green stuff in natural chakra, the energy that exists throughout everything naturally. And this gold stuff... well, that ISN'T Sage energy. Not really."

He pointed at the swirl. "I'm still not entirely sure how the Toad Sage or his student did it." As his team didn't know his dad, and it could be used to start a war... yeah, still a secret. "But this disc is the actual 'Sage Mode' as designed and described by both. By keeping the energies balanced, which required constant adjustment at all time, you could walk a fine line between 'Nothing is happening' and 'I am now made of stone' and make this golden stuff."

All the models turned into black goo and was reabsorbed into his body, before Naruto held up both hands, glowing. "The left grey light is my chakra, no elemental transformations or anything. The right green light is raw Nature Chakra, being released by some of the seals I designed today. If I touch you with my energy, not much will happen. If I touch you with this Nature Energy, you become a rock."

Naruto dropped his hands and held up one finger, a flame of gold hovering on the top. "The final, refined product however.., is perfectly safe. For anyone. It can be stored in a very simple storage scroll, one designed to handle chakra at least."

The tiny flicker of gold seemed to draw everyone's eyes to it as it danced on his finger. Waves of comfort and warmth seemed to glow and dance in the room.

He grinned. "It doesn't do much on its own, but if inserted into a person, it massively increases any energy they possess, and Vixen and I think that it grants a low level version of regeneration, while it reduces conflicts that exist as different types of power collide. It takes a LOT of careful balancing and practice to generate even a tiny bit of this stuff, and THIS is why Sage Mode is so strong in the first place."

The virus gave a sigh as the light vanished. "At least, it is safe in theory. Obviously since I started making this 'Sage' energy like... five minutes ago I need time to make sure people who aren't immortal can use it. I would like to have permission to test it on some animals, then on some volunteers if the creatures are all right."

Kurenai blinked. "What if something goes wrong?"

He shrugged. "If the animals go strange, I'll just eat them. Not as tasty as a well cooked meal, but fresh food is always nice. Plus I am pretty sure that the creatures will just become super powerful and healthy, this is to make sure the stuff is safe before sharing it with you guys."

The Hokage chuckled as he nodded for the boy to continue.

Naruto grinned. "So not only am I making that stuff, but I am also storing both it and raw nature energy in my plants. Vixen told me that being exposed to that energy for so long is slowly mutating some of our cells so we are basically turning each of my backups into sage-level sensors, able to detect blood-lust, chakra systems, natural energy use, body heat, and anything else my cells learn to detect in the future. Vixen suggested that you could have me set up a few plants around the village as an extra security system."

Blinking, the Hokage leaned forward. "While I love the new technique you've developed, how would you be able to show the results when you were off on a mission or otherwise occupied?"

The boy tapped the Hokage's cleared desk, and a deep black goo with red veins spread rapidly across the surface stopping at the edges. Just like the miniature him from earlier, the entire mass suddenly quivered, and rose up as a replica of the Village hidden in the leaves.

He pointed near the training grounds. "As you can see, my actual range isn't large enough to get full detail except for a few dozen feet around the plant right now." Tapping the model, the entire map was filled with moving blobs, that grew more person or animal like as they neared the training area. "Right now I programmed this to swap modes when you tapped here, the Hokage Tower. It can also make targets glow."

Tapping the tower he continued. "Here only people or animals glow, this mode shows only those who used hostile intent in the last hour, and anyone trying to suppress their chakra levels.., that one is a bit buggy, but when it works it is great." Tapping again he pointed. "Then it goes back to just showing people. I had been working on this for a few weeks hoping to make a map like this, but I had no way of getting the information without putting a ton of tiny eyeballs everywhere, so this recent breakthrough really helped. Much harder to detect or block."

The Leader of the village gave the boy a very impressed expression before going into serious business mode. "Genin Uzumaki, your creation and knowledge of its workings has been classified as a Rank SS secret, and will be collected for use by the village. A one-time S tank mission payment will be deposited within your account, with an ongoing C-Rank mission once a month for maintenance. Significant work or expansion will be requested at a rate of an additional B-Rank mission as required. Do you understand?"

Naruto stood straight with a grin. He honestly would have given it for free. "Hai, Hokage-sama." Looking at the map, he tapped it and dragged the entire mass onto the floor, where it became a strange block shape with a handle. "Place this where you wish it to be set up and apply chakra to it and it will install itself in that room." Blinking he chuckled. "Oh, and just a warning, I put a good chunk of Biomass into it, so it will be both heavy to move and large after deployment. It is made of me, so if you need it to move or modify itself just explain to it what you want. It will go by the name 'Sage Map' by the way."

Chuckling, the Hokage relaxed back in his chair. "I have younger men to carry things for me these days. Continue."

He gave a quick look and pointed at Kurenai's glove. "I made a glove for Kurenai-sensei, mostly made from deactivated viral cells, at least on the outside. The inside regulates the temperature to prevent the loss of grip on her weapons and warms up in the direction of one of my special viral markers." He pointed at Hinata's headband. "Like Hinata-chan's headband, which has some. The markers are living cells I'm connected to with a special biological makeup for easy reference. When sensei applies energy to specific symbols in her glove, it will direct her to that person so we she can find us."

Waving a hand at his own headband, he continued. "Hinata and I have headbands made from Biomass with those markers, while hers also has a chakra-enabled feature that would give a quick light vibration when it detects rapidly approaching beings, hostile intent, or large groups. Hopefully that will let her know to start using her blood-line ability in time to see and prevent ambushes."

The Hokage glanced at Shino with confusion. "And why do you not have one of these headbands?"

Shino pushed up his glasses. "My techniques heavily involve bug cloning and substitution, and such a headband was a liability. Why? Because my internal hive makes enough vibrations, noise, and excess heat for any such signals to not be easily detected."

Naruto nodded. "In the end he let me consume some of his bugs and I used viral marker Biomass to make some replica insects."

Shino nodded. "Not only am I able to be found by Kurenai-sensei, but Naruto has made me much stronger. Why? Because his created insects have no natural life span, can be easily modified to meet my specific requirements, have been designed to replicate up to a certain amount from provided food I consume to rapidly refill hive reserves, and can be used to directly communicate with Naruto."

Blinking, the he looked at the nodding boy. "I can't respond without growing a mouth, but they can vibrate once for yes and twice for no for basic questions. Glove, Bugs, and headbands, I mean. We plan to set up some codes for basic commands or phrases, but haven't had time yet."

The Hokage leaned back in his chair, retrieved and lit his pipe, and sat thinking. "Could you create a more general use communication tool for other teams?"

Naruto sighed. "No, not at this time. I can't even have too many viral markers or it becomes difficult to track them. Oh I could pull something off temporarily maybe if I created some clones to help manage it, but even with Vixen's help there is only so much I can do at once." He shrugged. "I'm working on it."

Nodding, the old man gave a small smile. "Anything else?"

He shook his head. "Not at this time, Hokage-sama." His teammates also chimed in, acknowledging the end of the briefing. The old man tapped a portion of his desk, and the room unlocked, window uncovered, and his Anbu returned and vanished. "I'm glad that your team stopped by, Kurenai-san. I actually have a mostly C rank, possibly B rank mission for your team."

She jerked, missing the excited reactions of her team. "B rank!? But we have only recently finished the required number of D ranks to even attempt a C rank!"

He nodded. "If I felt the risks were any higher, or that your team was less qualified, then I would indeed be assigning a more advanced squad to this situation. But aside from the advancements displayed and the tools developed, the extra ranking is due to a theoretically neutral party that will be present in the general location."

Tossing a scroll at their teacher, the old man continued. "A few weeks back a client came in from Wave Country, requesting a team to defend him from bandits as he worked on completing a bridge. As no teams were available due to the heavy restructuring and retraining, I ended up sending an Anbu squad for initially no extra cost."

His face went stony. "The client had lied though about the mission. There was a local merchant hiring both bandits and un-allied ninjas attempting to basically starve the country into submission while taking resources and slave labor. Our team ended up taking the man, Gatto, into our custody, but in the process his hired help either escaped or attempted to attack our agents."

Puffing on his pipe, he sighed, smoke curling upwards. "The escaped survivors basically turned bandit in the area, and your job will be the capture, interrogation, and elimination of said bandits while defending the area." Holding up a hand at Kurenai's initial objection, he continued. "I know you feel it is too soon for this level of exposure, but Naruto himself has had to handle much worse and I don't want to risk someone on your team getting injured when they react to their first kill and he doesn't respond as expected."

Looking at the conflicted looks on Hinata and Shino's faces, he sighed. "I normally wait until around 20 or 30 C rank or above missions before granting a bandit clearing operation to a team, but I have been handing these out far more often and far sooner to cover a deficiency of the Academy. There used to be several desensitization courses of different nature, for medics, combat specialists, future assassins, seduction missions, and so forth. But even those courses that remain were toned down and less intense without notifying our office."

Giving a weary look at the slightly horrified team. "I do not wish for my soldiers, for the children of my beloved village, to die because of our failure to teach them how to handle the most difficult of emotions. Missions like these will have a trained and powerful ninja, your teacher in this case, to both protect you during any reaction you may have and provide personal experience and comfort after."

Kurenai grumbled. "And why this one? Why a potential B rank?"

Giving a sad smile, he sighed. "Because I couldn't trust other teams to handle this. While your students have been working, training, and accomplishing missions at an accelerated rate, several others are still recovering from falsified scores, low physical fitness, and in several cases having no experience with techniques outside their clan specialties."

Smiling at Naruto with fond eyes, he continued. "That you have a team member that is basically immortal and able to fight one of my most powerful Jonin daily on near equal terms is a completely unrelated side note."

Naruto tried not to choke up as he felt a warmth in his chest. "So basically it's because we're awesome!"

Kurenai sighed. She still didn't want to put Hinata, nor the other two, in danger this soon. But then again, some small part of her never wanted to put them in danger EVER. And it was better to let them deal with this trauma as a team in the end. Looking over the mission scroll, she gave a nod. "Alright team, meet at the main gate in two hours. Pack for at least three weeks, heavy combat level just in case."

The three students straightened. "Hal Sensei!"

As the children dashed from the room, Sarutobi gave a sad smile. While sad, it was better to have them hurt while protected rather than slaughtered in battle.

~~Prototype Ninja~~

Surprisingly it was Shino who got exasperated first. "Calm down. Why? Because jumping and being over excited will drain energy and potentially expose us to an ambush."

Naruto tried not to bounce as they walked from the gates into the woods. "But this is my first time out of the village! And we are going on a real mission this time, not just cleaning garbage or walking pets."

Hinata giggled at his high energy. "N-Naruto-kun, did you remember to bring everything?"

He nodded. "Got lots of sealed stuff in a set of new seals based off the bounce seal. The item is transferred between them all until one requests it. That means even my clones can both receive and transmit real items without danger of it being lost when they pop. I even have a few clones back at home who is testing sage energy, so if we need anything he can seal it for us and boom! Instant delivery."

She blinked. "T-Then why did it take you so long to arrive at the gate? You were almost late."

Kurenai spoke up, her eyes still scanning the area for danger. "Part of our mission, the section that could boost it up to B rank, involves Naruto using his advanced sealing ability to try and get into a section of Gatto's house, a large vault he got some expensive ninja mercenary to seal up for him. So I had him gather any materials required for that kind of analysis or seal modification."

Naruto nodded. "I also had a list Jiji delivered to me specifying places for my 'plants'. Since we didn't have much time I basically put seedlings there that would grow over time on the surface while slowly digging deeper to handle the energy I pump their way."

Hinata's eyes widened. "H-How dangerous is the vault expected to be?"

Her sensei gave a shrug. "It shouldn't be dangerous at all since it had to be accessible by a civilian, but with seals involved no one can know before the security is studied."

They talked about random ideas, things they had worked on, and so forth until Kurenal held up a hand. "We are far enough now, let's move a bit faster."

The children yelped as she lept into the trees before rapidly following, launching from branch to branch.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

By nightfall everyone (Except Naruto) was either lightly tired (Kurenai) or exhausted (Hinata, Shino). All along the route Naruto had been subtly dropping small balls of viral matter, which would consume and replace bushes or the smaller saplings for future backup locations.

The amounts of Biomass left behind were very small, like marbles, and would take several weeks to fully consume even the tiny plants he had left them on. That was purposeful. Aside from costing less resources, the process would attempt to be as sneaky as possible, even converting into actual non-viral wood if someone attempted to destroy or harvest the 'plant'. Its viral roots would regrow it later to recover.

None would be able to create a backup of the boy for about three months or so, not unless he sent instructions otherwise. But they would all have Gather and Bounce seals, and they would be able to add to his sensing net.

As they were sticking to a major trade route, Naruto expected the information to be very useful in the future.

Working rapidly around his two teammates, he quickly set up his tent, a camp fire, and sent twenty clones out to find wood, search for local veggies or wildlife to hunt, and get some water. Each clone was given about 10 marbles worth of material to create a perimeter sensing ring as well as mark interesting locations nearby, like bee hives, future possible camping locations, good watering locations and the like.

Conversation was brief if any as his worn out friends and teacher settled after he explained what his clones were up to, and Naruto sat on a pulled up log a clone had found while he enjoyed the sounds of the night and the friendly atmosphere.

When one of his clones had killed, cleaned, and returned with a young stag He had consumed the non-meat portions and most of the internal organs of the deer) he had quickly set it up to roast over the fire with some seasonings he had sealed into a scroll sent by one of his clones back in the village.

While they ate quietly, he felt a ping in his memories. Apparently the new Sage Map had been deployed in a room he had never seen before in the Hokage tower, and it had reported in. The map had a very limited intelligence, and all actions had to be pre-programed in unless Naruto wanted to have to control it all the time or take it over for new body.

The reporting feature was a last minute thought of his just in case someone tried to steal the thing. Anyway, according to the map it had over 85% coverage of the village at the moment, and it would take a month to grant full coverage (As his plants grew) unless he was requested to allow them to grow without concern for subtly.

He also received a listing of the appreciation and compliments his creation had received so far, which had created a surprisingly large amount of pride in the boy.

After assigning a few clones to run watch shifts for the team and to monitor the local plant sensors, Naruto consumed the leftovers and retreated to his tent, then his mind scape, then to Vixen's couch to snuggle the night away.

~~~Prototype Ninja~~~

When they had actually reached the village that had suffered under Gato, they all were tired of traveling to some level or another. On the other hand, they were all fully rested (Kurenai had stayed up the first night testing Naruto's perimeter ability, but found it more reliable than expected) and they were all well fed.

Thus as they walked toward the home of the 'Client', who had contracted for the bandit protection, they had mixed feelings seeing the locals.

Everyone seemed happier, more energetic... but even as they helped each other the obvious mass poverty and still hungry children. Everywhere showed exactly how badly the late Gato had pressed everyone into the ground. The lack of men and women old enough to work was also apparent, as well as how untrained the survivors were as they tried to pick up the slack and help the town recover.

As they passed through the town's largest square, what used to be a busy market, Kurenai felt Natuto tug her sleeve. "Permission to deploy clones for resource gathering?"

After a pause she gave him a nod, and the boy turned to one of the curious groups they had been passing. "Good afternoon everyone! We are another group from the Hidden in the Leaves Village sent to help clean up the mess Gato left behind. Could I get a few questions answered?"

As the 13 year old had a body sculpted from muscle and towered in size, most assumed he was a man of some importance and gathered around. With an open smile he began questioning.

Yes, they normally fished for food and income, but most boats had been destroyed by Gato's men to both reduce income and prevent external commerce. That was why they were so happy that Tazuna was building a huge bridge, which should be completed soon now that most of the danger was gone with Gato's capture.

No, they didn't normally gather local food anymore, most were not hunters and the few that were had been unable to handle the high demand of their products so far. It was why food still cost so much, the supply even after being unmolested by Gato was still low.

There was only really one medic, a foreign young woman named Haku with some sort of scary body guard, and medical supplies were low. And while there were several builders, almost all of them were focusing on the bridge project to try and save the village, and couldn't spend time to repair the town from all the damage it took under the jerk's thumb.

The entire situation was a bit hard for Naruto to handle, he had never received THIS much positive attention from anyone, but he forced himself to stay calm, cheerful, and on topic. Even though the original Anbu Team's achievements had basically established anyone from his village as a hero.

The crowd was stunned as the man they were conversing with nodded, made a hand sign, and was surrounded by copies. "Alright guys! I want 20 clones water walking, using bone kunai to fish. One needs to stand by the dock and handle preparation and preservation, I want twenty fish fillets stored per seal at max." As the group of clones ran off with a loud 'Yosh!' he turned to the next section. "Another 20 is to handle lumber procurement."

Turning to the absolutely shocked crowed he gave a grin. "Hey everyone! Who knows the most about what type of wood needs to be used for boat building?" The man who raised a muscled arm was brought forward. "These twenty are now temporarily under your command. They are strong, fast, and can easily handle gathering a lot of what you guys need if you can explain to them which trees are acceptable for harvest, where to store the logs, how you want the wood processed, and where to store the  
processed wood. Can you help with that?"

Seeing the man nod, he had the tree group head off with him toward the forest.

Another hand sign and MANY more ninja's appeared. "Next, I want a group of 30 to scour the village, find any injured and bring them to the local doctor, and ask her what she needs supply wise. In the process, make note of any resources missing or dangerously damaged buildings, and keep an eye open for those bandits that have been around."

Turning back to the crowd he grinned. "Who has done a lot of local hunting or scavenging?"

Pulling the three volunteers, he gave them a grin. "Great! One of you show these three clones where they can set up a farming area, the other take another three clones to find and show what local vegetables are safe to eat so my guys can recognize and gather it, and the last can go with about twenty or thirty clones to show us where to avoid hunting, so we don't lower your local resources by whittling them down too much."

Feeling a few updates already come from the fishing group, he gave the remaining crowd (Which had grown by a lot during this) a huge smile. "Finally I need anyone who can cook to get up front. I have fresh fish being brought in, a few seasonings and vegetables I brought from home, and a fast growing supply of fresh water and fire wood to work with. So go get what you need to cook up a feast! If you need help carrying stuff, just raise your hand and a clone of me will go with you."

A few men and several women raised their hands, the atmosphere elevating something near party level as the crowd rapidly began to disperse, some running to get friends or family, others heading to get supplies. Even now he could see people bringing in tables, chairs, and other needs like chopsticks, cups, and more.

Turning to his smiling team, he grinned at his sensei. "Kurenai-sensei, resources are being gathered. Shall we?"

As they left Naruto dropped another twenty clones to handle the crowd. With his much more efficient chakra storing and usage method, and after several weeks of building up his chakra reserves, his clone cap was nowhere near as low as it had been at the start. Currently he could handle a bit over 500 clones easily, and since designing the Gathering and Bounce seals he had no real cap to his maximum chakra storage now. As long as there were periods of rest for him to build up his stores, he had near unlimited chakra to unleash.

Weaving between the growing streams of people heading back to the center square, the group headed toward the bridge builder's home as Naruto absently began sending marbles of Biomass through some bounce seals to his many clones in the forest and even the fishing group. One of his clones had dropped a marble earlier into the water, and it had surprisingly infected one of the local water plants in the bottom, so now they were doing it on purpose.

Being underwater and away from prying eyes, he had allowed those groups to rapidly spread, consume their host, and fully replace the surrounding plants as well. Even as they superficially looked the same, under the sand and soil they began establishing not only more sensors but backup nodes as well.

As team 8 continued walking through the town, he absently followed the updates as the clones pinged in. Several examples of local herbs, vegetables, and even a few local fruit trees had been found by the gathering group. His clones were transferring it all to a farm near the edge of town closest to the forest. Surprisingly all those D rank missions helping with gardens and so forth turned out to be useful.

He also consumed one of each item gathered this way, and tried out a few tricks. All that fiddly work making his backup plants had given him a very deep insight into how to modify at least some basic attributes of the plant kingdom.

When the local villager assisting his 'people' returned to town, letting his clones work on the farm, he consumed the rest of the fruit trees for comparison as well as a nearby regular tree or two for raw Biomass, then around the edge of the 'farm square' he rapidly formed his virus into genetic variations of them.

He couldn't do everything he wanted, there was way too much he had to know before he had that level of control, but he did make some basic changes. The fruit trees had interconnecting roots and branches, and only the lowest branches were able to grow fruit (So no climbing required for harvest). Amount of fruit buds produced was lowered, but the size of fruit created was increased.

In effect, instead of a fruit tree growing 100 fruits ranging from tiny to huge, it produced only 20ish high quality, extremely high nutrition products.

Naruto sighed as he continued receiving updates. He wanted to do more, and in fact had been experimenting with plants in his personal training area. He wanted to make fruit grow quicker, like superfast-as-you-watch speed, but hadn't had any luck. He wanted the trees to grow year round rather than seasonally, but that had turned out odd when testing it back home.

As long as he was PERSONALLY in the area, he could sacrifice Biomass to stimulate fruit growth, and in fact his clone was doing so already, but he couldn't just have clones stand around being farm tools all day. Well he could, but even then they needed Biomass to force growth and the one at the farm had consumed all surface plants inside the farm just making the trees bloom once.

At least it saved effort for the second phase of planting. His clones had his biomass grind up the soil of the farm heavily, until the rocky soil was effectively consumed into much finer and nutrient filled dirt. Even that had required one of the clone fishing squads to bring by the Biomass from cleaning the fishies.

The farm now had multiple rows of consumed, duplicated root vegetables (He couldn't change them too much, although they should stay genetically viable while also produce less and thus have higher quality produce), a row or two of herb bushes, some berry bushes, and most interestingly of all a type of grain plant that the villager helping his clones had been surprised to see locally growing.

Apparently that grain had been a staple crop for the village before Gato had burned the local field and killed the farmers who worked it (faster to cripple the local economy), and what had remained in the wild had been gathered a bit too enthusiastically by desperate people searching for food. It was easier to catch a plant than an animal after all.

Needless to say, almost half of the fairly large farm area had duplicated grain plants now, which required converting another three large trees into Biomass.

The local healer Haku had been shocked when a dozen of him had shown up with new patients, and her body guard was actually fairly intimidating with his sharp teeth and massive sword. They had both settled down fairly quickly after his local clone explained roughly what was going and he had been able to deliver much needed bandages, some medical creams, and (after some trial and error) medical herbs that she requested.

Naruto quickly passed on a command through Vixen to his farming clones, who passed requests to the hunting clones to keep an eye open for those same herbs to be added to the farm.

Thankfully no bandits had turned up yet.

As their sensei knocked on the door, he focused on the present. This WAS their first C rank client after all!

The door opened after the fourth knock, an old man reeking of alcohol stumbling slightly into view. "Damn it, this is my only day off!" Glaring slightly as he tried to stay vertical, he focused sort of on the surprised woman. "And I said NO MORE STRIPPERS!"

Naruto blinked as he watched his sensei barely restrain punching the man.

Well wasn't this just magical.


End file.
